The London region recorded another COVID-19 death as hospitalizations continued to decrease over the weekend.
The Middlesex London Health Unit confirmed the death on Saturday, the fourth of the week. No additional deaths occurred Sunday or Monday, leaving the local death toll at 356.
There were 174 new cases logged over the weekend in London and Middlesex County. The health unit said 54 of the infections were recorded Monday, 63 were reported Sunday, and 57 were confirmed 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 33,171 since the pandemic began.
Resolved cases in the area went up to 32,127, while the number of known active cases went down by four to 688 on Monday.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) confirmed there are 21 inpatients with the virus in its care. That is down two from Friday. Hospitalizations in the London-area have been slowly dropping for the past week and a half, after holding in the low to mid-40s for two weeks. According to hospital officials, only 12 of the COVID positive inpatients are being treated for the virus, while the remaining nine 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, unchanged from Friday. There are currently five or fewer inpatients with the virus admitted to Children’s Hospital.
The LHSC currently has 159 workers who have tested positive for COVID-19. That is down from 167 on Friday.
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 11,669. No additional deaths were recorded over the weekend, leaving the death toll at 153. The health unit said the total number of resolved cases in the area is 11,313. There are 203 known active cases locally.
Provincially, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 held steady on Monday.
There are currently 551 people with the virus in hospital, unchanged from Sunday. Intensive care unit (ICU) admissions decreased by one to 181. However, hospitalization and ICU numbers could actually be higher than what was released Monday as not all hospitals report over the weekend, public health officials reminded.
Ontario logged 1,217 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 1,139,418.
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 12,336.
The number of resolved cases are up by 1,317 to 1,110,677.
In the last 24 hour period, 8,644 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 13.4 per cent, up from 12.1 per cent a week ago and 11.8 per cent two weeks ago.
There have been 31,975,075 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 90.8 per cent have been given their second dose. To date, more than 7.1 million Ontarians have received a booster shot.
Read original story from London Ontario – BlackburnNews.com