Ontario reports more than 13,800 new COVID-19 cases setting another new daily case count record

The number of Ontario’s new COVID-19 cases set a record for the second day in a row as the province reported more than 13,800 new infections on Thursday.

The province said 13,807 new cases were tallied on Thursday, eclipsing the previous record of 10,436 new infections across Ontario just a day earlier.

Another eight people have reportedly died of the virus in Ontario, with the total number of COVID-19 fatalities now at 10,179 according to the province.

The Ministry of Health says there have been 739,648 reported cases of the virus in Ontario as of Wednesday.

Ontario’s chief medical officer of health is expected to provide an update on COVID-19 at 3 p.m. on Thursday. Last week, Moore suggested the province was ready to move away from testing and contact tracing.

A planned briefing was cancelled earlier this week as officials scrambled to deal with the highly contagious Omicron variant.

South of the border, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. has amended its policies and cut isolation restrictions for positive cases to five days from 10 and shortened the quarantine time for close contacts.

More than 10,000 COVID-19 cases were reported yesterday on 59,259 completed tests. But some 74,535 tests were still pending, suggesting the real number of cases was more than double the reported total.

And although much more transmissible, a Public Health Ontario study suggests the Omicron variant could causes less severe illness.

While vaccinated people account for the majority of new COVID-19 cases, there are more than 10 times more unvaccinated individuals being hospitalized after contracting COVD-19 according to the province’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.

The province recorded its first daily case count of over 10,000 on Dec. 25, just weeks after the advisory table warned cases were on the rise.

More than 90 per cent of Ontarians over the age of 12 have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while some 88 per cent have received at least two doses.

Many locations across Southern Ontario offering free COVD-19 tests, but the rapid tests are becoming a commodity.