Ontario is reporting its highest number of new COVID-19 infections in weeks but the tally includes some older cases from public health units that were unable to upload their information to the province’s database earlier this week.

The Ministry of Health says that there were 131 new cases of the virus confirmed on Thursday, which would be the highest number since 134 cases were reported back on July 31.

It should, however, be noted that the number includes two days of data from 11 public health units that were affected by an unspecified glitch on Wednesday. At this point it is unclear how many of the 27 new cases being reported by those public health units today date back to Tuesday, though Health Minister Christine Elliott said in a message posted to Twitter that the latest tally almost certainly represents an “overestimation of daily counts.”

The five-day rolling average of new cases now stands at 106.6, which is an increase from this time last week when it stood at 82.6.

The number of days in which the total number of new cases surpasses 100 would also seem to be on the upswing. Between Aug. 1 and 14 there were just three such days but in the seven days since then there have been four.

Nonetheless, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams told reporters on Thursday that he does not believe that the increase is a major cause for alarm.

"Moving into Stage 3, there was some apprehension that the numbers would take off, and we have not seen that and I think that is because Ontarians are still taking this seriously,” he said.

37 new cases in Ottawa

Of the 131 new cases reported on Friday, a little more than a-third were in either Toronto (25 cases) or Peel Region (21 cases) while another 14 were spread across the rest of the GTA. There was also a spike in cases in Ottawa, where 37 were new instances of the virus were confirmed.

Hospitalizations, meanwhile, continue to trend downwards and there are now just 35 COVID-19 patients being treated in Ontario hospitals with 13 of those people currently in intensive care units.

The number of active cases across the province did increase by 22 on Thursday and now stands at 986.

Other highlights from the data:

  • The province conducted another 28,073 tests on Thursday. Since the pandemic began it has conducted more than 2.7 million individual tests.
  • There were another three deaths over the last 24 hours. The total death toll so far now stands at 2,796.
  • Nearly half of the new cases (64) were reported in people between the ages of 20 and 39, continuing a recent trend.
  • The total number of COVID-19 patients who have been hospitalized so far now stands at 4,810, accounting for nearly 12 per cent of all cases