For the fifth day in a row, Ontario is reporting less than 200 new cases of COVID-19 across the province, giving hope to the residents of three remaining public health regions which have yet to enter Stage 2 of reopening.

Only 173 new lab-confirmed positive cases of the deadly viral disease were recorded through the government's Public Health Information System on Wednesday, down from 184 on both Monday and Tuesday.

With 32,917 cases in total, this represents an increase rate of just 0.5 per cent — the lowest we've seen since the pandemic first hit Ontario in January.

Public Health Ontario's freshly-published daily epidemiologic summary for June 17 also shows a record high recovery rate of 85.1 per cent.

At least 28,004 of all confirmed cases are now considered to be resolved, while another 2,553 have resulted in death. As of this morning, the mortality rate for COVID-19 in Ontario is 7.8 per cent, with 64.1 per cent of all deaths reported among residents in long-term care homes.

Only three people are confirmed to have died as a result of contracting the virus between Tuesday and Wednesday, according to today's data drop, making for another encouragingly-low figure.

#COVID19 testing in #Ontario🧪🇨🇦

- % positive 0.7% - (orange)👍🏻
- Testing: 25278 today (red)👍🏻
- Backlog: 24887 pending today (green)

Hope testing continues to ramp up!#onhealth #COVIDー19 #COVID19ON #CovidTesting pic.twitter.com/1C6kV0u80U

— Dr. Jennifer Kwan (@jkwan_md) June 18, 2020

Ontario's Minister of Health, Christine Elliott, announced Thursday morning that the province is now seeing "a persistent decline in the number of active cases, with 1,455 fewer active cases since last Tuesday."

Daily testing numbers similarly continue to soar with 25,278 completed on Wednesday alone, bringing the province's total number of tests performed to date up to 1,096,707. 

This should all come as excellent news to Ontario residents who've already entered Stage 2, which allows residents to visit beauty salons as well as eat and drink (but not sing) on restaurant patios, among other activities we all used to take for granted.

The figures will likely be even more welcome among those who live in the three regions which are still stuck in Stage 1 due to their less-than-ideal COVID-19 situations: Toronto, Peel and Windsor-Essex.

Provincial health officials have cited both a consistent new case count below 200 and high enough testing rates to detect new outbreaks quickly as criteria for moving forward with the reopening process.

It would appear as though Ontario, on the whole, is right where we want to be. We'll find out on Monday, when the province reassess the situations in all regions, whether Toronto is there yet too.