When will COVID-19 be over? Ontario's top doctor says 'clock is ticking' to get vaccinated, use 'our ticket out of this pandemic'

Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario's chief medical officer of health, stressed the importance of everyone in the province receiving a full course of COVID-19 vaccination, as most recent cases are in individuals who have not been vaccinated yet.

From May 15 to June 12, of the 29,380 COVID-19 cases reported in Ontario, 83.2 per cent had not been vaccinated at all and 15.6 per cent were partially vaccinated. About 1.2 per cent were fully vaccinated.

"Vaccines are critically important to controlling this pandemic and it’s our ticket out of this pandemic over the next several months," Dr. Moore said at a press conference on Tuesday.

He added that looking at the population currently covered by vaccination, it's particularly important to get elementary, high school, college and university students vaccinated before September.

"They are the most social, they’re the most able to propagate the virus back into the communities and we watch what’s going in England, that...un-immunized population is the most susceptible to the virus," Dr. Moore said.

"The clock is ticking, we only have eight, nine weeks before schools, universities, colleges reopen and we want those areas of our communities to be able to open as safely as possible."

On Tuesday, Ontario reported 244 COVID-19 cases, including 80 cases from 2020 that have been included in Toronto’s case count, which means the province is actually reporting 164 new cases.

A total of 15,921,585 vaccine doses have been administered across Ontario and 5,883,641 people in the province have been fully vaccinated to date.