After an encouraging streak of fewer than 200 new COVID-19 cases in Ontario for five consecutive days, the province is reporting a slight spike in patient numbers, up 257 in the past 24 hours.

This comes after a general downward trend during which there were only two days in the past two weeks with more than 200 new infections (June 20 and 23, which both saw 206).

#COVID19 in #Ontario [June 29]:
34911 known cases* (257 new cases)
2665 total deaths (7 new deaths)

See THREAD for more graphs📈⤵️#covid19Canada #COVIDー19 #onhealth #COVID_19 #covidontario #COVID19ontario #onpoli pic.twitter.com/PBXFpIzUir

— Dr. Jennifer Kwan (@jkwan_md) June 29, 2020

The increase also comes five days after Toronto and Peel finally entered Stage 2 of the province's reopening, lagging behind other regions that got the green light to open things like restaurant patios, hair salons and malls earlier in the month.

But, though some may be quick to blame Ontario's biggest city for the new numbers, it appears that Windsor-Essex — which was the last region to reopen on June 25, with some parts still held back — is apparently the culprit.

A total of 177 of the new infections announced today are being attributed to the area, compared with 80 in other parts of the province.

Meanwhile Toronto Public Health is listed as having four recoveries and no new cases, for a total of -4, apparently due to some earlier error in the Integrated Public Health Information System.

Metric 1 (cont): 177 of 257 (69%) new cases reported today are from migrant workers in Windsor after extensive testing over the weekend as per @celliottability

Metric 2: 'Sufficient acute and critical care capacity..'

Status 🟢

Graph tracking:
Total COVID-19 ICU cases pic.twitter.com/M3Rmo7G7O7

— Allen Greenwood (@allengreenwood) June 29, 2020

As Doug Ford stated last week, many cases in the border region of Windsor are in migrant farm workers, a demographic that the province has been focusing testing efforts on in recent days.

The towns that still remain in Stage 1 — Leamington and Kingsville — are known to be hubs for such seasonal agricultural workers.

It will still be more than a week before the province sees the true impact of areas like Toronto, Peel and the other parts of Windsor-Essex entering into Stage 2, given the virus's incubation period of up to 14 days.

Also of note — 98 new cases of COVID-19 in Windsor-Essex on Sunday, 96 of which were among agricultural workers. https://t.co/dACgy2teZ0

— Mary Elizabeth (@MaryBword) June 29, 2020

So far, Ontario has had 34,911 cases of the novel coronavirus, with more than 86 per cent of them considered to be resolved, and 7.6 per cent resulting in fatalities (64 per cent of those in long-term care homes). This leaves an active case count of 2,050 at this time, and seven additional deaths since June 27.

Testing continues to increase, with 27,127 tests completed on Sunday, 16,701 of which are still awaiting results.