the remote northern ontario community of kashechewan first nation, where most adults are fully vaccinated, is now battling a surge of covid-19 cases. most of those infected are children under 12 who aren’t eligible to be vaccinated and teenagers who have either not been vaccinated or have only one dose.
indigenous services minister marc miller said wednesday there were 232 active cases in the community.
ontario has accelerated eligibility for second doses of vaccine to seven hot spots where the delta variant is spreading.
people in those regions who got their first dose on may 9 or earlier could book a second shot starting monday.
ontario reported 370 new cases of covid-19 on thursday. the most cases were in toronto (67), waterloo (57) and peel (47).
ottawa was no. 5 on that list, with 34 cases reported by the province. the numbers from ottawa public health are released later in the day and often vary slightly because the data is collected at different times.
there were seven new deaths reported in the province.
the province reported 397 people in hospital with the disease and 362 people in intensive care, 232 of them on ventilators.
ontario also reported record vaccinations for the second day in a row, with 210,611 doses administered, for a total of 11,943,025 doses.