London COVID-19 hospitalizations down again

After hitting a six month low on Thursday, the number of people with COVID-19 in London hospital has dropped again.

The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) confirmed on Friday it has just ten inpatients with the virus in its care, a decrease of two over the past 24 hours. It is the lowest COVID-19 hospitalizations have been in the city since November 12 of last year when there were just nine COVID admissions.

The hospital network noted half of the ten infected inpatients were admitted for treatment of the virus. The remaining five came to the hospital for other reasons and tested positive for the virus.

The hospital network has no patients with COVID listed in intensive care or at Children’s Hospital.

The number of hospital workers testing positive for the virus increased over the past 24 hours. The LHSC said there are currently 56 employees with COVID-19, up five since Thursday. At this time last week, there were 59 infected workers.

The Middlesex London Health Unit logged another 14 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, down from 15 the previous day. The health unit continues to note that single-day case counts are likely an underestimate of the true number of people in the region with the virus, due to limited testing eligibility. The total number of confirmed infections in the region since the pandemic began is now 38,488.

For the third straight day, there were no additional deaths linked to the virus. The COVID-19 death toll in London and Middlesex County is 401.

The number of resolved cases rose to 37,939. There are 148 known active cases in the region, down five over the past 24 hours

Starting Monday, the health unit is changing the frequency with which they update the COVID-19 dashboard for the region. Instead of posting the latest figures five days a week, the dashboard will now only be updated twice weekly on Mondays and Thursdays.

Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for Oxford and Elgin counties, made a similar change this week and now only updates its COVID-19 dashboard on Wednesdays.

Ontario has also shifted to a weekly reporting system and will release the COVID-19 data, including new cases, deaths, and hospitalizations on Thursdays. However, Public Health Ontario’s COVID-19 Data Tool will not start displaying weekly updates until June 23. According to Public Health Ontario, this is to allow time to adapt the tool to align with the new weekly epidemiological summary.

Read original story from London Ontario – BlackburnNews.com