The COVID-19 death toll in the London area went up by one for a third straight day as other indicators of increased spread of the virus trended up.
The Middlesex London Health Unit confirmed a woman in her 70s died from the virus on Thursday. She was not associated with a long-term care or retirement home. Her death is the third this week and the 14 this month. The local death toll now stands at 361.
Another 119 infections were logged on Thursday, up from 72 on Wednesday. Daily case tallies are believed to be an underestimate of community spread since the provincial government limited eligibility for PCR testing at the end of December. The total number of cases locally since March of 2020 is now 34,014 according to the health unit.
The number of resolved cases is up to 32,853. Currently, there are 800 known active cases in the region, up from 698 a week ago.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) said it currently has 218 staffers who have contracted the virus, up from 208 on Wednesday and 199 a week ago
COVID-19 hospitalizations in London also went up Thursday. The LHSC reported it has 32 inpatients with the virus, up three over the past 24 hours. It is the first time in more than two weeks hospitalizations have risen above 30.
Of the 32 people currently in hospital, there are 15 being treated for COVID-19 and 17 being treated for other ailments but who have also tested positive.
Intensive care unit admissions related to the virus remained at five or fewer, as did the number of COVID-19 patients in the care of Children’s Hospital.
Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for Elgin and Oxford counties, does not update its COVID-19 cases dashboard on Thursdays. Its next update will be released on Friday.
Provincially, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations has soared above 800 for the first time since the start of the month.
A total of 807 people with COVID-19 were admitted to Ontario hospitals on Thursday, up 29 over the previous day. The last time there were more than 800 people with the virus in hospitals across the province was on March 4. At this time last week there were 661 hospitalizations.
The provincial breakdown of hospitalization numbers reported on Thursday shows 48 per cent of those admitted were because of COVID-19 and 52 per cent are being treated for other reasons but also have tested positive for COVID-19.
There are 166 people with COVID-19 in intensive care units across the province, an increase of one since Wednesday, according to the latest figures released by the province.
Public health officials said there were 3,139 new cases in Ontario on Thursday. Public health officials have cautioned that those numbers are considered an underestimate of the spread of the virus though, as the provincial government continues to restrict who is eligible for a free PCR test.
The province’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 1,162,609.
Six additional deaths related to the virus were reported on Thursday, to bring the death toll up to 12,433. The province said five of the latest deaths occurred over the past 30 days and one death occurred more than a month ago.
The number of resolved cases rose by 2,121 to 1,129,428.
In the last 24 hour period, 18,318 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 16 per cent, up from 13.4 per cent last week and 12.3 per cent two weeks ago.
The province has administered 32,064,229 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, as of Wednesday 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 a second dose. More than 7.1 million booster shots have been administered.
