TORONTO – Ontario is reporting 1,969 new cases of COVID-19 today and 36 more deaths linked to the virus.
Health Minister Christine Elliott says that there are 886 new cases in Toronto, 330 in Peel Region and 128 in York Region.
A spokeswoman for Ontario’s Ministry of Health says that as Toronto migrates to the provincial data system, additional records were reported for the local public health unit, resulting in an overestimate of today’s daily counts.
Ontario is reporting that nearly 30,400 tests were completed since the last daily update.
The province says 2,256 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were administered since Sunday’s report.
A total of 341,900 vaccine doses have been administered in Ontario.
There have been 270,180 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in Ontario since the pandemic began. Of those, 244,939 have been resolved and 6,224 have resulted in someone’s death.
International travellers began taking a COVID-19 test upon arrival in Ontario starting Monday in a bid to stop contagious new variants of the virus from further infiltrating the province.
The provincial government announced the plan on Friday, the same day the federal government announced a similar program that’s to take effect in the coming weeks.
Premier Doug Ford praised the prime minister for announcing the new federal testing plan, but said Ontario would conduct its own traveller testing until Ottawa’s program kicked in.
The testing order comes into effect today at Toronto’s Pearson International airport, and will also eventually apply to the province’s land border crossings to the United States.
Also Monday, schools reopened in four more public health units in southern Ontario.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said Thursday that students will be able to return to physical classrooms in the Ottawa, Eastern Ontario, Southwestern, and Middlesex-London public health units.
But schools in some other parts of the province harder hit by COVID-19 remain closed.
