The number of people infected with COVID-19 in London hospitals rose slightly over the weekend.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) said on Monday there are 46 inpatients with the virus in its care. That is up three from Friday. Hospitalizations in the London-area have been in the low to mid-40s for a week. According to hospital officials, only 13 of the COVID positive inpatients are being treated for the virus, while the remaining 33 are being treated for other ailments but have tested positive for COVID.
The intensive care unit has five or fewer patients with COVID-19 admitted, down from six on Friday. There are currently five or fewer inpatients with the virus admitted to Children’s Hospital.
It has been a week since the LHSC publicly updated how many of its workers have tested positive for COVID-19. Last Monday, there were 232 staffers listed as infected. The LHSC stated it will post the current number once it completes a validation of its data.
The Middlesex London Health Unit logged 173 new COVID-19 cases over the weekend.
There were 50 new cases recorded on Monday, 64 new cases on Sunday, and 59 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 32,181 since the pandemic began.
There were no additional deaths recorded over the past 72 hours. The local death toll since the pandemic began stands at 351, with two of those deaths occurring this month and 49 occurring in February.
Resolved cases in the area went up to 31,255, while the number of active cases went up by 21 to 575 on Monday.
Southwestern Public Health, the health unit that covers Elgin and Oxford counties, reported 60 new cases since Friday. The latest infections bring the two counties total case count to 11,356. There were no additional deaths recorded, leaving the death toll unchanged at 149. The health unit said the total number of resolved cases in the area is 11,007. There are 200 known active cases locally.
Provincially, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 was below 700 for a second straight day.
There are currently 693 people with the virus in hospital, up by nine since Sunday. Intensive care unit (ICU) admissions increased by two to 249. The hospital date released Monday could actually be higher as not all hospitals release current numbers over the weekend, Health Minister Christine Elliott reminded.
Ontario logged 1,074 new infections over the past 24 hours. But 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. The latest cases put Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic to 1,114,284.
Public health officials confirmed four additional COVID-19 deaths on Monday, three of which occurred over the past month and one occurred more than a month ago. The provincial death toll since the pandemic began nearly two years ago now stands at 12,574.
The number of resolved cases are up by 1,365 to 1,085,011.
In the last 24 hour period, 9,447 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 11.8 per cent, up from 8.9 per cent a week ago.
There have been 31,797,518 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered in Ontario as of Sunday night. Nearly 93 per cent of Ontarians 12 and older have received one dose of the vaccine, while 90.7 per cent have been given their second dose. To date, more than 7 million Ontarians have received a booster shot.
