The COVID-19 death toll in London and Middlesex County increased by two on Thursday.
The Middlesex London Health Unit confirmed a man in his 70s and a woman in her 80s have succumbed to the virus. Both were associated with a long-term care home. There have now been four COVID-19 related deaths in the region in less than a week. The latest deaths bring the local death toll up to 375.
The health unit also recorded 89 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, down from 127 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 36,771 according to the health unit.
The number of resolved cases is up to 35,503. Currently, there are 893 known active cases in the region, down from 968 a week ago.
COVID-19 hospitalizations dropped by one over the last 24 hours. The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) confirmed on Thursday it has 49 inpatients with the virus. It is the first time this week that number has been below 50.
Of the 49 people in hospital, there are 22 being treated for COVID-19 and 27 being treated for other ailments but who have also tested positive.
Intensive care unit admissions related to the virus went up by one to eight. That is slightly higher than at this time last week when there were seven people with the virus listed in the ICU. The number of COVID-19 patients in the care of Children’s Hospital stands at nine, with one additional child admitted since Wednesday. Five or fewer of those inpatients are in paediatric critical care.
The hospital network said it currently has 235 infected staffers, down seven compared to Wednesday. A week ago there were 283 employees who had tested positive.
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 dropped back below 1,700 for the first time in three days.
A total of 1,661 people with COVID-19 were admitted to Ontario hospitals on Thursday, down 73 over the previous day. At this time last week there were 1,662 hospitalizations.
The provincial breakdown of hospitalization numbers reported on Thursday shows 45 per cent of those admitted were because of COVID-19 and 55 per cent are being treated for other reasons but also have tested positive for COVID-19.
There are 202 people with COVID-19 in intensive care units across the province, a decrease of nine since Wednesday, according to the latest figures released by the province.
Public health officials said there were 3,560 new cases in Ontario on Thursday. Public health officials have cautioned that daily case 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 1,252,578.
Twenty-one additional deaths related to the virus were reported on Thursday, to bring the death toll up to 12,792. The province said one death was also removed from the count following a data clean up.
The number of resolved cases rose by 3,751 to 1,208,322.
In the last 24 hour period, 18,875 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 15.2 per cent, down from 17.9 per cent a week ago.
The province has administered 32,695,876 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, as of Wednesday night. Ninety-three per cent of Ontarians 12 and older have received one dose of the vaccine, while 91.1 per cent have been given a second dose. More than 7.2 million first booster shots have been administered.
