While the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 in the London region went down by one on Friday, the number of infected in intensive care doubled.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) confirmed it has 78 COVID-19 inpatients in its care, down from 79 on Thursday. Of those, a dozen are listed in intensive care. That is up six over the past 24 hours.
The biggest number jump reported by the hospital network on Friday was in staff who have tested positive for the virus. Currently 438 hospital employees have COVID-19, up 88 from the previous day. The number of current staff infections is also more than three times higher than it was a week ago, when 135 workers were sick.
Two outbreaks remain at the LHSC. On University Hospital’s 7IP Clinical Neurosciences (wings 100, 202, 204, 210, 220-232, and 300) there are seven confirmed patient cases and eight potential staff infections. On Victoria Hospital’s Adult Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit five or fewer patients have contracted COVID-19, as have nine staffers.
Another 412 new COVID-19 cases were recorded over the past 24 hours in the city and county. That is down from 635 on Thursday. However, the Middlesex London Health Unit has noted that single-day case counts are likely an underestimate of the true number of people in the region with the virus, due to changes made late last month to testing eligibility.
The local total of infections since the pandemic began now sits at 23,150
There has not been a COVID-19 related death locally in over a week, leaving the death toll at 259.
The number of resolved cases rose by 346 to 18,450. There are 4,441 known active cases in the region, up 81 over the past 24 hours.
There are now 29 area seniors’ facilities dealing with outbreaks of COVID-19. The two latest facilities to declare outbreaks were Strathmere Lodge in Strathroy and Dorchester Terrace in Dorchester.
In Elgin and Oxford counties, there were 194 new COVID-19 cases reported Friday, up from 137 the previous day. Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for the region, said that brings the local total number of cases to 8,159 with 6,499 resolved. The death toll is unchanged at 117. There are currently 1,543 active cases in the two counties.
Ontario recorded it’s highest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations to date on Friday.
Public health officials confirmed there are currently a record breaking 2,472 people with COVID-19 in hospitals across the province. The previous high was recorded on April 20, 2022 when 2,360 COVID-19 positive people were hospitalized.
In intensive care units, there are 338 patients with COVID-19, up from 319 on Thursday. Of the 338 in the ICU, 232 are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and 106 are fully vaccinated. The spike in hospitalizations and ICU admissions comes a day after the Ontario Science Table released new figures that show people who are fully vaccinated are 79.8 per cent less likely than the unvaccinated to end up in hospital. Getting double-vaccinated also makes a person 93.3 per cent less likely than a person who is unvaccinated to end up in intensive care, the science table said.
Ontario logged 11,899 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday. That is down from 13,339 new infections Thursday but is up from 11,582 cases reported Wednesday and 11,352 infections confirmed Tuesday. Public health officials have cautioned the daily counts are an underestimate of the spread of the virus in the province due to recent changes to PCR testing eligibility.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now stands at 853,270.
There were 43 additional deaths reported over the past 24 hours, increasing the provincial death toll to 10,315. The province said 42 of those deaths happened over the past ten days and one was from a month ago.
The number of resolved cases are up by 11,946 to 707,732. There are currently 135,223 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 61,137 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 26.6 per cent.
To date, the province has administered 28,140,051 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with more than 11.4 million people having received both shots required to be fully inoculated. Just over 34 per cent of Ontarians have received a booster shot.
