The Middlesex London Health Unit recorded a drop in single-day COVID-19 cases on Friday.
Eleven new infections were logged over the past 24 hours. The new cases are a decrease from the 22 new cases Thursday and 29 cases Wednesday. It is the tenth straight day the number of new cases recorded have been in the double-digits.
The city and county’s total caseload since the pandemic began now sits at 13,896.
There has not been a COVID-19 related death in the area since Tuesday. That leaves the death toll unchanged at 238.
The number of resolved cases rose by 38 to 13,481. There are 177 known active cases in the region, down 27 from Thursday.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) has 11 COVID-19 inpatients in its care, the same number as Thursday. Of those, five or fewer are listed in intensive care and none are admitted to Children’s Hospital. Currently, there are five or fewer hospital staff who have tested positive for the virus.
The number of cases involving variants of concern identified in the area was unchanged at 4,234 on Friday. The strain racking up the most new infections over the past few weeks locally has been the B.1.617 (Delta) variant with a total of 720 cases. There has not been a single new case of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant, P.1 (Gamma) variant, or the B.1.351 (Beta) variant this week.
Schools across the region are dealing with two outbreaks and 29 active cases at 24 facilities. The outbreaks involve the London District Catholic school board's St. Thomas More Catholic Elementary School and Conseil Scolaire Viamonde's École élémentaire La Pommeraie. There are currently 10 active cases within the Catholic board, two active cases in the two local French-language boards, and 16 active cases in the Thames Valley District school board.
Just over 82 per cent of the 887 new COVID-19 cases reported since August 13 were among people who were not yet fully vaccinated. The unvaccinated and those who have only received one dose accounted for 88.2 per cent of all hospitalizations locally over the last six weeks.
There are four pop-up, walk-in clinics planned in the region this weekend. White Oaks Mall continues to host one of the clinics daily, while Village Green Community Church is holding one between 1:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Friday. A full list of upcoming pop-up vaccination clinics in London and Middlesex County can be found by clicking here.
In Elgin and Oxford counties, there were two new COVID-19 cases reported Friday, the same as the previous day. Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for the region, said that brings the local total number of cases to 4,243 with 4,117 resolved. The death toll was unchanged at 86. Currently, there are 40 active cases in the two counties. As of Thursday, 85.2 per cent of area residents aged 12 and older have had one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 79.6 per cent have received both doses.
Ontario recorded more than 700 new COVID-19 cases for the first time this week.
Public health officials confirmed 727 new infections on Friday, up from 677 cases logged on Thursday. There were 463 new cases on Wednesday, 574 on Tuesday, and 610 on Monday.
Preliminary data shows of the 727 new cases reported in Ontario over the past 24 hours, 447 were not vaccinated, 56 had received one dose, and 170 were fully vaccinated. There were 54 infected individuals whose vaccination status was not known.
Toronto had the province’s highest daily number of cases Friday with 144, followed by Peel Region with 83, Ottawa with 70, Hamilton with 66, and York Region with 54.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now stands at 582,635.
There have been no new cases of the Alpha variant in Ontario. That leaves the province’s total number of B.1.1.7. cases at 146,455. Cases of the B.1.351 (Beta) variant and P.1 (Gamma) variant were unchanged leaving the totals at 1,502 and 5,229. The number of new cases involving the B.1.617 (Delta) variant is up by 98 for a total of 17,836.
There were 11 additional deaths reported to bring the provincial death toll up to 9,688. However, three of the deaths reported Friday actually occurred more than a month ago and are just now being included in the provincial numbers as part of a data cleanup.
Hospitals in Ontario have 308 COVID-19 positive patients admitted to general wards. There are 193 patients in intensive care and 167 are on ventilators. Of those on the general wards, 122 were unvaccinated, 11 were partially vaccinated, and 11 were fully vaccinated. Only 11 of those in ICU were fully vaccinated.
The number of resolved cases are up by 814 to 567,200. There are currently 5,747 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 36,855 COVID-19 tests were processed, down from 37,630 the previous day. Ontario’s positivity rate fell to 1.8 per cent.
To date, the province has administered more than 21.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with more than 10.4 million people having received both shots required to be fully inoculated.