Daily COVID-19 cases in the London region remained in the double-digits for a third straight day.
The Middlesex-London Health Unit reported 12 new infections on Thursday. That is down from 25 on Wednesday and matches the number recorded on Tuesday. The latest cases bring the region's total since the start of the pandemic to 6,230.
The death toll was unchanged at 184 with no additional COVID-19 related deaths reported over the past 24 hours.
The health unit has updated its COVID-19 dashboard to include the number of cases of Variants of Concern in the region. To date there have been 12 screened and four confirmed variant cases.
London and Middlesex County are up to 5,932 resolved cases. There are 114 known active cases remaining.
An outbreak at Mount Hope Centre for Long-Term Care has been resolved. Five other local seniors facilities and Western University residence Essex Hall continue to deal with outbreaks.
There are eight cases at five elementary and high schools in the area. Four of the cases are located at Sir Arthur Carty Catholic. A second case of COVID-19 was reported at Bonaventure Public School on Thursday. The school previously confirmed a case at the school on Wednesday. Close contacts of the infected individuals are in isolation and all of the schools are still open.
The health unit said 6,615 doses of the vaccine made it into arms last week, for a total of 33,340 doses administered since the vaccination rollout began at the end of last year. Another 6,900 new vaccination appointments for seniors over 80 were opened up Thursday morning. They were expected to be filled before days end.
Southwestern Public Health's online reporting system was down for a second day. The health unit for Elgin and Oxford counties was unable to update the page with the latest COVID-19 numbers, but did confirm it had four new cases and zero new deaths on Thursday. The region's total case load and death count is 2,554 and 67. There has not been a COVID-19 related death in the counties since February 20. Public health officials confirmed it has seen its first two COVID-19 variant cases. Two residents who live together tested positive for the U.K. variant, known as B.1.1.7. Their infections were linked to travel outside of Canada and have since been resolved. Bethany Care Home in Norwich is the area's lone long-term care facility battling an outbreak of COVID-19. Currently, there are 83 active cases in the region.
Provincially, the number of new cases stayed below 1,000 for a third consecutive day.
Public health officials logged 994 new infections across the province Thursday, up slightly from 958 on Wednesday and 966 on Tuesday.
Regions with the most new cases were Toronto with 298, Peel with 171, and Ottawa with 64.
There was another rise in the number of variant cases being identified. Public health officials said 92 more cases of the U.K. variant, known as B.1.1.7 were confirmed to bring the total to 644. The number of lab confirmed cases of the South African variant, known as B.1.351, went up by four to 31. Total number of cases of the Brazilian variant, P.1. was unchanged at three.
The province’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 304,757.
Ten deaths were reported over the past 24 hours, to increase the province’s death toll to 7,024.
At hospitals in Ontario, there are 649 patients with COVID-19. Of those, 281 are in intensive care and 183 are on ventilators.
The number of resolved cases rose to 287,424. There are currently 10,309 known active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 65,643 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s current positivity rate is 2.1 per cent.
The province has administered 784,828 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine since Wednesday night. There are 268,118 people in Ontario who have received their second dose of the vaccine to be considered fully inoculated.