Daily cases in Middlesex-London rose slightly into the double-digits Friday, but the overall number of active cases in the region stayed below 100 for a second consecutive day.
The Middlesex London Health Unit logged 11 new cases, up from eight on Thursday. Daily cases over the past two weeks have hovered between the single-digits and the low-to-mid teens. Since the start of the pandemic, the region has seen a total case count of 6,143. Of those cases, 451 have been recorded since the start of February.
The death toll remained unchanged at 181 for a 13th straight day. Only six COVID-19 related deaths have been recorded this month, down considerably from 73 in January.
Chelsey Park long-term care home in London is outbreak free for the first time since January 2. The outbreak there was declared over on Thursday. There are now just five local long-term care or retirement homes with outbreaks.
Anne’s Catholic School and Pinetree Montessori School are the only school and preschool in the region with outbreaks.
The Thames Valley District School Board reported a single case of COVID-19 at Prince Charles Public School in London. The school will remain open next week and only those contacted by the health unit are considered close contacts of the affected individual. There are currently four active cases within the school board, a break down of them all can be found here.
The London Health Sciences Centre has nine inpatients in its care with COVID-19. Fewer then five of those patients are in the intensive care unit. There are also fewer than five hospital employees who have tested positive for the virus.
Twelve more recoveries were reported in the area over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of resolved cases to 5,871. That puts London and Middlesex County's known active cases at 91. The active case total fell below 100 for the first time since early November on Thursday.
Southwestern Public Health recorded eight new COVID-19 cases and no additional deaths on Friday. That puts Elgin and Oxford counties’ total number of cases up to 2,486 and leaves the death toll at 67. Resolved cases rose to 2,376, leaving 43 active cases between the two counties. Outbreaks at Valleyview Nursing Home in St. Thomas and Caressant Care Retirement Home Woodstock have been declared over. That leaves just one seniors home outbreak at Aylmer Retirement Residence, which has one positive resident case and one death associated with it.
Daily case numbers in Ontario climbed above 1,200 for the first time this week.
According public health officials, 1,258 new infections were confirmed on Friday. That is up from 1,138 new cases on Thursday, 1,054 on Wednesday, and 975 on Tuesday. It is also the fourth time this week the province has logged more than 1,000 daily cases.
Regions with the highest case counts were Toronto with 362, followed by Peel and York Region with 274 and 104 cases.
The daily epidemiologic summary indicates Ontario had 28 more lab confirmed cases of the U.K. variant, known as B.1.1.7. for a total of 477. There have been 14 confirmed cases total of the South African variant, known as B.1.351 and two case of the Brazil variant, P.1.
The province’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 298,569.
Twenty-eight deaths were reported over the past 24 hours with none of them linked to long-term care or retirement homes. The province’s death toll is now 6,944.
Ontario’s hospitals are currently dealing with 683 patients with COVID-19. Of those, 284 are in intensive care and 193 are on ventilators.
Resolved cases across the province are up to 281,331. That leaves 10,294 known active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 64,049 COVID-19 tests were processed, down slightly from 66,351 the previous day. Ontario’s current positivity rate is 2.3 per cent.
The province has administered 643,765 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Thursday night. A total of 258,014 people in Ontario have received their second dose of the vaccine and are considered fully inoculated.