The London region's daily tally of new COVID-19 cases nearly hit the 30 mark for the third time this month on Thursday.
The Middlesex London Health Unit logged 29 new cases over the past 24 hours, up from 21 the previous day. The only other days so far in September where daily case counts have been higher than Thursday's was on September 1 and September 5 when 30 cases were recorded.
The total number of cases locally since the pandemic began is now 13,586, according to the health unit.
The death toll is unchanged at 235, with no additional COVID-19 related deaths reported in London or Middlesex County since last Friday.
McCormick Home in London remains the only local long-term care or retirement home dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak.
The number of resolved cases is up by 24 to 13,144. Currently, there are 207 active cases in the region, up eight from the previous day.
The number of cases involving variants of concern in London and Middlesex County has gone up by 31 to 4,061. All of the new cases were identified as the Delta variant for a total of 547 locally. The number of cases of the Alpha variant, Gamma variant, and Beta variant were unchanged leaving those totals at 3,384, 124, and two.
Of the 779 new COVID-19 cases to be reported in the region over the past six weeks, 83.7 per cent were among people who were not yet fully vaccinated against the virus or had not reached full immunity. As of September 4, 84 per cent of all local residents 12 and older have received one dose of the vaccine and 77.3 per cent have been given both shots.
Nine new COVID-19 cases were logged Thursday in Elgin and Oxford counties, up from one new infection recorded on Wednesday. Southwestern Public Health’s total caseload has now increased to 4,124. The death toll remained at 85, with no additional COVID-19 deaths reported. The total number of resolved cases stands at 4,002 and there are 37 known active cases locally.
Provincially, the daily number of COVID-19 cases jumped back to nearly 800 after three straight days below 600.
Public health officials said there were 798 new cases on Thursday. That is up from the 545 infections logged on Wednesday, 581 cases recorded on Tuesday, and 564 cases on Monday.
Of the 798 new cases identified on Thursday, 497 were among unvaccinated individuals, 57 were people who were partially vaccinated, 178 were fully vaccinated individuals, and 66 had an unknown vaccination status.
Regions with the most new cases over the past 24 hours were Toronto with 159, Peel Region with 73, York Region and Ottawa with 72 each, and Windsor-Essex with 66.
The province’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 572,130.
According to the province’s daily epidemiologic summary, Ontario identified three new cases of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant over the past 24 hours for a total of 146,440. Cases of the P.1 (Gamma) variant and B.1.351 (Beta) variant were unchanged at 5,223 and 1,501. There were 295 new cases involving the B.1.617 (Delta) variant for a total of 13,303.
Ten additional deaths related to the virus were reported on Thursday. However, seven of those deaths occurred more than a month ago and were just added to the overall total due to a data cleanup, the Ministry of Health said. The province’s death toll is currently 9,579.
At hospitals in Ontario, there are 365 people with COVID-19 on general wards, a decrease of ten from the previous day. The number of people in the intensive care unit went down by nine to 185 and there are 160 people on ventilators – a decrease of six from Wednesday.
Of those on general hospital wards with COVID-19, 176 are not fully vaccinated and 28 have received both doses.
The number of resolved cases rose by 772 to 556,495. There are currently 6,056 known active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 29,684 COVID-19 tests were processed, the highest single-day total in two months. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 3.1 per cent.
The province has administered more than 21 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, as of Wednesday night. There are more than 10 million people in Ontario who have now received the second dose of the vaccine to be considered fully inoculated.