The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Ontario reports record 2,275 new COVID-19 cases, including 22 in greater Kawarthas region The government says Public Health Ontario has made several updates in how it extracts and analyzes COVID-19 case data, including changing the data extraction time from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. for health units using case and contact management. This change, which has captured 2.5 hours worth of cases today that would have been reported tomorrow, has resulted in a one-time increase in case counts. "That explains some of the increase," Ontario health minister Christine Elliott said today during a Queen's Park media conference providing an update on the province's vaccination rollout. "But those are still disturbing numbers, and we do know that in some areas people are still not complying with the public health rules and regulations", adding "It's really important that people not get together in gatherings larger than their own household -- that's how we have the community transmission that we have." While the province hasn't specified how many additional cases the data collection change has added to today's total, the seven-day average of daily cases has now increased by 86 to 1,927. In the greater Kawarthas region, there are 22 new cases to report and 14 additional cases resolved, with the number of active cases across the region increasing by 9 to 134. Most of the new cases reported today are in Toronto (711), Peel (586), Windsor-Essex (185), and York (154). There are double-digit increases in Hamilton (99), Durham (92), Waterloo (71), Halton (65), Niagara (65), Simcoe Muskoka (55), Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph (37), Middlesex- London (31), Brant County (28), Southwestern Public Health (21), Huron Perth (12), Eastern Ontario Health Unit (11), and Haldimand-Norfolk (11), with smaller increases in Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unitt (8) and Chatham-Kent (8). The remaining 15 health units are reporting 5 or fewer new cases, with only 2 health units reporting no new cases at all. Of today's cases, 51% are among people under 40 years of age, with the highest number of cases (815) among people ages 20 to 39 followed by 672 cases among people ages 40 to 59. With 1,810 more cases resolved since yesterday, the percentage of resolved cases has decreased by 0.1% to 85.4%. The average positivity rate across Ontario since yesterday has increased by 0.8% to 5.4%, meaning that 54 out of every 1,000 tests performed were positive for COVID-19 on December 14. Ontario is reporting 20 new COVID-19 deaths today, including 1 in long-term care facilities. Hospitalizations have jumped by 108 to 921, with 5 more patients with COVID-19 admitted tn ICUs and another 7 patients on ventilators. 2/6