The province of Ontario is reporting a slight drop in new COVID-19 cases and deaths today while residents keep an eye on case counts to see if they are falling as much as health officials are hoping for.

The numbers have been up and down over the past two weeks, leaving many to wonder when the province will enter into the various phases of its official framework to re-open the economy, which is not due to start until criteria such as "a consistent two-to-four week decrease in the number of new daily COVID-19 cases" have been met.

The latest numbers on May 7 include the addition of 399 cases day-over-day (a 2.1 per cent increase), and 48 deaths, down from 412 new cases and 68 new deaths announced on Wednesday.

15,179 (+2218) tests done today in Ontario. The highest was Sunday (17.1k)
Highlights:

- A increase of 4 active COVID cases!
- 4075 active COVID cases left (+4)
- 399 new cases (-13)
- 347 recoveries (-96)
- 48 deaths (-20)

*+/- indicate change from previous day*

— lazy libido (@SubtweetGodd) May 7, 2020

A solid 71 per cent of the 19,121 COVID-19 patients the province has seen have now recovered, a stat that continues to rise gradually — though it is noteworthy that for cases to be considered resolved, they just have to be 14 days past the onset of symptoms and not in hospital.

More than 1,000 Ontarians are sick enough to require hospitalization at this point (1,032, one fewer than on Wednesday), and 220 are in the ICU (up one from Wednesday). Nineteen fewer people are on a ventilator today than yesterday, for a total of 155.

Patient demographics still indicate that more women than men have been infected in the province (57.3 per cent vs. 41.9 per cent), that most have been residents 60 or older (43.7 per cent) and that the majority of cases have been in the Greater Toronto Area (60.8 per cent).

Hundreds of long-term care homes are still seeing outbreaks, with nearly 40 per cent of afflicted residents (1111 of 2831 positive cases) having died as a result. Meanwhile, the standard mortality rate for the virus is 7.7 per cent in Ontario, and the hospitalization rate is 12.2 per cent.

Of those, 13,569 are resolved (71 per cent) and 1,477 people have died (48 more than Wednesday). There are 1,033 people in hospital, 220 in ICU and 155 on a ventilator. The number of tests performed is 380,854 (15,179 more than Tuesday) and results are pending for 13,012. (2/2)

— Bill Kingston (@BillKingston) May 7, 2020

Testing continues to be ramped up across the province, with more than 15,000 tests completed in the last 24 hours, the vast majority of them (13,012) still awaiting results, marking a substantial backlog. 

The province now leads all others for testing volume and rate per capita after at one point being at the bottom of the list. Per cent positivity among those tested sits below 5 per cent.

Still, it is important to remember that not all of those who are potentially sick are necessarily being tested.

How? All of us just go full force back into our daily lives, overload the health care system, kill a bunch of people and have to start this all over again? Nobody is happy with this. Everyone wants to go back to normal but it’s not possible.

— kaylin (@kaylin_bea) May 6, 2020

With all retail stores in the province able to open for curbside pickup starting May 11 and officials changing their tune about stay-at-home orders, it seems that despite our numbers not consistently lowering each day — and a recently extended state of emergency — our coronavirus situation is still on enough of a general downward trend for things to at least start returning to a new, more socially distant form of normal.