The London region’s daily tally of new COVID-19 cases rose above 20 for the first time this week.
The Middlesex London Health Unit logged 23 new cases Thursday, up from 20 the previous day. Single-day case numbers have largely held at 20 each day this week. The only day they fell below that number was on Tuesday when 15 cases were recorded.
The total number of cases locally since the pandemic began is now 14,157, according to the health unit.
The death toll is unchanged at 240, with no additional COVID-19 related deaths reported in London or Middlesex County since Tuesday.
The number of resolved cases is up by 24 to 13,746. Currently, there are 171 active cases in the region, up two from the previous day.
The number of cases involving variants of concern in London and Middlesex County has held at 4,259 since the start of the week. Since the health unit began tracking variants there has been a total of 745 cases involving the B.1.617 (Delta) strain, 3,384 cases of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) strain, 124 cases of the P.1. (Gamma) variant, and two cases of the B.1.351 (Beta) strain.
The London Health Sciences Centre has ten patients in its care with COVID-19, unchanged from Wednesday. Five or fewer of those patients are listed in intense care and none are admitted to Children’s Hospital. There are fewer than five hospital staffers who are isolating after contracting the virus.
An outbreak has been declared at the Dearness Home in London. Health officials said the outbreak is in the 5E area and was identified on Wednesday. No other seniors' facilities in the region are dealing with outbreaks.
There are three local schools with outbreaks - Lord Elgin public school, St. Catherine of Siena Catholic elementary school, and the London Christian high school. Of the three, only Lord Elgin has been closed because of the outbreak. It is slated to reopen to in-person learning on Tuesday.
Of the 794 new COVID-19 cases to be reported in the region over the past six weeks, 77.7 per cent were among people who were not yet fully vaccinated against the virus or had not reached full immunity. Of those hospitalized with the virus, 72.7 were unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated and 24.2 per cent had received both shots.
Eleven new COVID-19 cases were logged Thursday in Elgin and Oxford counties, up from eight new infections recorded on Wednesday. Southwestern Public Health’s total caseload has now increased to 4,366. The death toll remained at 87, with no additional COVID-19 deaths reported since Tuesday. The total number of resolved cases stands at 4,200 and there are 79 known active cases locally.
Provincially, the daily number of COVID-19 cases jumped above 500 for the first time in three days.
Public health officials said there were 587 new cases on Thursday. That is up from the 476 infections logged on Wednesday, 429 cases recorded on Tuesday, 511 cases on Monday, and 580 cases confirmed Sunday.
Of the 587 new cases identified on Thursday, 349 were among unvaccinated individuals, 27 were people who were partially vaccinated, 164 were fully vaccinated individuals, and 47 had an unknown vaccination status.
Regions with the most new cases over the past 24 hours were Toronto with 119, Peel Region with 55, Windsor-Essex with 45, and York Region with 42.
The province’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 590,104.
According to the province’s daily epidemiologic summary, Ontario identified six new cases of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant over the past 24 hours for a total of 146,485. Cases of the P.1 (Gamma) variant and B.1.351 (Beta) variant were unchanged at 5,229 and 1,503. There were 38 new cases involving the B.1.617 (Delta) variant for a total of 18,979.
Six additional deaths related to the virus were reported on Thursday. One death was removed from the provincial total as part of a data cleanup. The province’s death toll is currently 9,776.
At hospitals in Ontario, there are 279 people with COVID-19 on general wards, a decrease of one from the previous day. The number of people in the intensive care unit went down by seven to 149 and there are 125 people on ventilators – a decrease of seven from Wednesday.
Of those on general hospital wards with COVID-19, 108 are not fully vaccinated and 50 have received both doses.
The number of resolved cases rose by 586 to 575,753. There are currently 4,575 known active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, over 37,000 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 1.7 per cent.
The province has administered 21,974,193 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, as of Wednesday night. There are more than 10.6 million people in Ontario who have now received the second dose of the vaccine to be considered fully inoculated.