The Canadian Press
TORONTO – Ontario is reporting 1,958 new cases of COVID-19 today and 43 more deaths linked to the virus.
Health Minister Christine Elliott says there are 727 new cases in Toronto, 365 in Peel Region, and 157 in York Region.
She says nearly 36,000 tests were completed since Sunday’s report.
The province also says that 2,448 more cases of the novel coronavirus were resolved.
Ontario is reporting that 5,537 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were administered since the last daily update.
A total of 286,110 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in the province so far.
There have been 256,960 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ontario since the pandemic began.
Of those, 227,494 have been resolved and 5,846 Ontarians have died from the virus.
Meanwhile, schools in seven public health units across southern Ontario reopened for in-person classes on Monday.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said that means 100,000 students are returning to the classroom for the first time since before the winter break.
The province is implementing more safety measures in areas where schools are reopening, including requiring students in grades 1 through 3 to wear masks indoors and when physical distancing isn’t possible outside as well.
It’s also introducing “targeted asymptomatic testing” and enhanced screening protocols in those regions.
While it’s been more than a month since students in southern Ontario have been in the classroom, classes resumed in the northern part of the province on Jan. 11.
The provincial government has said the chief medical officer of health is keeping a close eye on the COVID-19 situation in public health units where schools remain closed to in-person learning to decide when it’s safe for them to reopen.
But the province has said that in five hot spot regions — Windsor-Essex, Peel, York, Toronto and Hamilton — that won’t happen until at least Feb. 10.
The public health units where schools are reopening today are the Grey Bruce Health Unit; the Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit; the Hastings and Prince Edward Counties Health Unit; the Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington Health Unit; the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit; Peterborough Public Health and Renfrew County and District Health Unit.
