There was a significant drop in the number of hospital employees with COVID-19 over the weekend as admissions to the intensive care unit held steady.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) said Monday that there are 21 inpatients with COVID-19 in the ICU, the same number as was reported on Friday. In total, the hospital network currently has 147 inpatients with the virus, an increase of 15 over the past 72 hours.
According to the LHSC, 83 of its COVID positive inpatients are being treated for COVID-19, while the remaining 64 are being treated for other ailments but have tested positive for the virus.
There are 390 hospital workers who have tested positive for COVID-19, that is down a whopping 121 from Friday and is the lowest number of active staff cases since January 6.
Additional outbreaks have been declared at University Hospital. Seven patients have been infected on the Cardiac Surgery Inpatients Unit, five or fewer than five patients are sick on the U10 Subacute Medicine and Palliative Care Unit, and five or fewer than five patient and nine confirmed staff cases have been linked to the U5 100/300 Cardiology Inpatients Unit. In all there are seven outbreaks at University and Victoria hospitals.
The Middlesex London Health Unit logged 818 new infections and three additional deaths since Friday.
There were 201 new cases recorded on Monday, 288 new cases on Sunday, and 329 new cases on Saturday. However, public health officials caution that single-day case numbers are an underestimate of community spread due to eligibility changes that limit who can receive a test.
The area’s total case count stands at 26,334 since the pandemic began.
Three more people in London and Middlesex County succumbed to COVID-19 on Saturday. Their deaths bring the death toll up to 270. There were no deaths related to the virus reported on Sunday or Monday.
Resolved cases are up by 1,043 to 23,137. The number of active cases in the city and county went down by 205 since Friday to 2,927 on Monday. That is the lowest they have been so far this year.
Southwestern Public Health, the health unit that covers Elgin and Oxford counties, reported 268 new cases since Friday. The latest cases bring the two counties total case count to 9,208. There were no additional deaths recorded, leaving the death toll at 128. The health unit said the total number of resolved cases in the area is 8,106, leaving 974 known active cases.
Provincially, there was another jump in the number of people with COVID-19 in hospitals.
Ontario public health officials reported 3,887 people with the virus in hospital on Monday, up 292 since the previous day. Intensive care unit (ICU) admissions dropped by one to 578. Those figures could be higher than reported as not all hospitals release current numbers over the weekend, Health Minister Christine Elliott reminded.
There were 8,521 new infections logged over the past 24 hours. However, single-day case counts are considered to be an underestimation of community spread as the Ford government restricted eligibility for publicly-funded COVID-19 tests at the end of December. Currently, PCR testing is only available for high-risk individuals who are symptomatic or are at risk of severe illness from COVID-19.
The latest cases put Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic to 956,607.
There were 22 more COVID-19 related deaths reported in Ontario on Monday to bring the death toll up to 10,628.
The number of resolved cases are up by 8,292 to 851,365.
In the last 24 hour period, 37,059 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 24.2, down slightly from 26.7 per cent at this time last week.
There have been 29,522,313 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered in Ontario as of Sunday night. Just over 91 per cent of Ontarians 12 and older have received one dose of the vaccine, while 88.7 per cent have been given their second dose to be considered fully inoculated. To date, 46.6 per cent of Ontarians have received a booster shot.
