The daily COVID-19 case count in the London region climbed back up into double-digits on Monday.
The Middlesex London Health Unit reported 18 new infections over the past 24 hours. That is up from 7 new cases on Sunday and five on Saturday. Single-day case numbers in the region have bounced back and forth between single-digits and the low twenties since the start of the month.
The area’s total case count stands at 12,444 since the pandemic began.
The death toll is unchanged at 222 with no additional COVID-19 related deaths reported locally since Friday.
There were ten more cases involving variants of concern identified in the region since Friday, for a total of 3,256. The Alpha B.1.1.7 variant, which originated in the U.K., now accounts for 3,167 of the cases. There are 83 cases of the Gamma P.1. variant from Brazil, two cases identified as the Beta B.1.351 variant from South Africa, and four cases of the B.1.617 variant and sublineages of that strain that originated in India. There are 310 cases that have tested positive for a mutation.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) is dealing with an outbreak at one of its hospitals for the first time in nearly three months. The outbreak was declared Sunday at University Hospital's 8TU - transplant unit. Fewer than five people have contracted the virus there. It is believed all of the cases are related to patients as the hospital is currently reporting no employees have tested positive. The last time the hospital had an active COVID-19 outbreak was in March. As of Monday, the LHSC has 22 inpatients with COVID-19, up from 15 on Friday. Of those in hospital, ten are in the intensive care unit. Fewer than five patients transferred in from other hard hit regions are in acute care and ICU.
There are no current outbreaks at local seniors’ facilities, schools, or daycare centres.
Resolved cases in the city and county are up by 14 to 12,122. Currently, there are 100 active cases in the region.
The number of new cases in Elgin and Oxford counties was seven on Monday. The number includes infections identified both Saturday and Sunday, as Southwestern Public Health does not update its COVID-19 dashboard on weekends. The latest cases bring the two counties total case count to 3,832. There were no additional deaths recorded over the past two days, leaving the death toll unchanged at 83. There are currently no active institutional outbreaks locally. The health unit said the total number of resolved cases in the area is 3,730, leaving 19 known active cases.
Provincially, the number of new COVID-19 cases dropped below 500 for the first time in five days.
Public health officials reported 447 infections on Monday. That is down from 530 on Sunday, 502 on Saturday, 574 on Friday, and 590 on Thursday. Prior to that, Ontario had 411 and 469 new infections Wednesday and Tuesday.
Regions with the most new cases over the past 24 hours were Toronto with 110, Peel with 61, Waterloo with 56, Porcupine with 39, and Durham with 29.
According to the province’s daily epidemiologic summary, Ontario identified 458 cases of the B.1.1.7. variant, or Alpha as it is now known, since the previous day for a total of 139,940. There were two more cases of the P.1 variant, Gamma, for a total of 4,135, while the number of new cases of the B.1.351 variant, Beta, is unchanged for a total of 1,137. The daily epidemiologic summary does not list cases in the province of the B.1.617 (Delta) variant, originally found in India.
The province’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 540,130.
Four deaths were reported over the past 24 hours, to increase the province’s death toll to 8,961.
At hospitals in Ontario, there are 384 patients with COVID-19. However, the province noted that is an underestimate as not all hospitals in Ontario reported their numbers over the weekend. The number of infected patients in the intensive care unit is down by 17 to 409 and there are five fewer patients on ventilators for a total of 268.
The number of resolved cases rose by 670 to 525,795. There are currently 5,374 known active cases of the virus in Ontario, down from 7,937 a week ago.
In the last 24 hour period, 13,588 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s current positivity rate has risen to 2.8 per cent, from Sunday’s 2.6 per cent.
The province has administered 11,344,441 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, as of Sunday night. A total of 1,894,320 people in Ontario have received their second dose of the vaccine to be considered fully inoculated.
Accelerated second dose bookings for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine opened across the province on Monday morning. The Ontario government announced over the weekend it had shortened the interval between doses from 12 weeks down to eight weeks.