A day after falling to its lowest number since mid-March, the daily COVID-19 new case count shot back up to nearly 50 on Wednesday.
The Middlesex London Health Unit reported 46 new infections over the past 24 hours. That is a significant increase over the 11 cases logged on Tuesday, but is more in line with numbers seen last week. The one day drop has been attributed to a dip in the number of people going for COVID-19 testing over the long weekend.
Since the pandemic began, there has been a total of 12,076 cases in the city and county.
There has not been a COVID-19 related death in the region in five days, leaving the death toll at 217.
Hospitalizations in the area continue to decline with 39 COVID-19 patients admitted to the London Health Sciences Centre, 10 fewer than this time last week. There are 15 COVID-19 patients listed in intensive care. COVID-19 patients transferred to the LHSC from outside of the region include five in acute care beds and fewer than five in intensive care. That number will go up in the coming weeks as the hospital accepts patient transfers from Manitoba, which is currently dealing with a third wave surge of hospitalizations.
There were 36 more cases involving variants of concern in London and Middlesex County, for a total of 2,917. Of those, 2,878 have been identified as the B.1.1.7 from the U.K., 38 are the P.1. variant from Brazil, and one is the new B.1.617 strain from India. The health unit also noted 359 cases have tested positive for a mutation.
There are active outbreaks at three area seniors’ facilities, two daycare centres, and one secondary school.
Resolved cases are up by 75 for a total of 11,420 . There are currently 439 active cases in the region.
Southwestern Public Health recorded 5 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, it's lowest daily case count in two weeks. The latest cases puts Elgin and Oxford counties’ total up to 3,751. There were no additional COVID-19 related deaths reported in the region, leaving the death toll at 80. Resolved cases rose to 3,590. There are now 81 active cases locally. An outbreak remains at Tillsonburg District Memorial Hospital, where 14 residents and five staff members have been infected. There are three deaths associated with the outbreak.
Ontario marked its second straight day below 1,100 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday.
A total of 1,095 new infections were confirmed over the past 24 hours, up from Tuesday’s 1,039 cases. Tuesday's case count was the province’s lowest to be reported in a single-day since March 6.
Regions with the highest new number of infections continue to be Toronto with 257 and Peel with 215. That is followed by Durham with 123 and York Region with 101.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 526,045.
According to public health officials, there were 23 additional deaths related to the virus on Wednesday. The official death toll now sits at 8,678.
The daily epidemiologic summary indicates Ontario found 992 more lab confirmed cases over the past 24 hours of the B.1.1.7. variant. There are now a total of 121,122 cases of that strain, which was first discovered in the U.K. Another 43 cases of the P.1. variant has been confirmed for a total of 2,505 and there were 19 more cases of the B.1.351 variant for a total of 836 in Ontario. The province does not currently list how many cases involving the B.1.617 variant, originally found in India, have been identified in Ontario.
Hospitalizations in the province have gone up slightly with 1,073 COVID-19 positive patients admitted. That’s an increase of 48 patients from the previous day. Of those in hospital, there are 672 in intensive care and 469 on ventilators.
Resolved cases across the province are up to 499,640. That leaves 17,727 known active cases of the virus in Ontario, down from 23,416 a week ago.
In the last 24 hour period, 24,008 COVID-19 tests were processed, up from 16,900 on Tuesday. Ontario’s positivity rate has dropped to 5.3 per cent from 6.2 per cent.
The province has administered 8,386,950 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Tuesday night. A total of 569,317 people in Ontario have received their second dose of the vaccine and are considered fully inoculated.