For the first time this year, there are no children with COVID-19 in the care of London’s Children’s Hospital.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) confirmed the drop on Monday after several weeks of having five or fewer inpatients admitted to the hospital. Overall, COVID-19 hospitalizations at the LHSC were down by one since Friday to 27.
According to hospital officials, only 13 of the COVID positive inpatients are being treated for the virus, while the remaining 14 are being treated for other ailments but have also tested positive for COVID.
The intensive care unit has five or fewer patients with COVID-19 admitted, unchanged from Friday. Meanwhile the number of hospital workers who have tested positive for the virus dropped by 13 to 195 on Monday. While lower than what was reported on Friday, the number is still up from the 159 infected employees reported on Monday of last week.
Transmission within the community remains relatively high, with 202 new cases logged over the weekend in London and Middlesex County. The health unit said 56 of the infections were recorded Monday, 72 were reported Sunday, and 74 were confirmed Saturday. Public health officials have cautioned 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 33,743 since the pandemic began.
There were no additional deaths related to the virus reported since Friday, leaving the death toll unchanged at 358.
Resolved cases in the area went up to 32,642 and the number of known active cases went up by six to 743 on Monday.
Southwestern Public Health, the health unit that covers Elgin and Oxford counties, reported 94 new cases since Friday. The latest infections bring the two counties’ total case count to 11,897. There was one additional death recorded over the weekend to bring the death toll to 155. The health unit said the total number of resolved cases in the area is 11,465. There are 277 known active cases locally.
Provincially, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 went up on Monday.
There are currently 655 people with the virus in hospital, up 102 from Sunday. A week ago there were 551 COVID positive people in Ontario hospitals. Intensive care unit (ICU) admissions increased by one to 158. While both hospitalizations and ICU numbers are up, they could actually be higher than what was released Monday as not all hospitals report over the weekend, public health officials reminded.
Ontario logged 1,741 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 1,155,046.
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 12,405.
The number of resolved cases are up by 1,450 to 1,123,205.
In the last 24 hour period, 6,243 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 17.9 per cent, up from 13.4 per cent a week ago and 12.1 per cent two weeks ago.
There have been 32,040,321 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 90.9 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