New cases of COVID-19 hit a high on Friday not seen in the London-area in nearly a month.
The Middlesex London Health Unit recorded 22 new infections over the past 24 hours. That is up from 13 on Thursday and 15 on Wednesday. The number of cases logged in a single day locally has not surpassed 20 since October 22 when 27 infections were confirmed.
The city and county’s total caseload since the pandemic began now sits at 14,706.
There has not been a COVID-19 related death in the area since Wednesday. That leaves the death toll unchanged at 249.
The number of resolved cases rose by six to 14,326. There are 131 known active cases in the region, up 16 over the past 24 hours.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) has 19 COVID-19 inpatients in its care, up three from Thursday. Of those, eight are listed in intensive care and five or fewer are admitted to Children’s Hospital. Currently, there are five or fewer hospital staff who have tested positive for the virus.
A COVID-19 outbreak at St. Nicholas Senior Catholic in London has been deemed over. That leaves just three other outbreaks at local schools - Mary Wright Public School in Strathroy and Notre Dame Catholic, St Vincent De Paul Catholic Elementary in London. The Thames Valley school board reported additional cases at three more schools on Friday at Glendale High School, Oakridge Secondary School and Westfield Public School.
Fifty-eight per cent of the 462 new COVID-19 cases reported since October 8 were among people who were unvaccinated, not yet fully vaccinated or were not two weeks removed from their second dose. The unvaccinated and those who have only received one dose accounted for 69.2 per cent of all hospitalizations locally over the last six weeks.
In Elgin and Oxford counties, there were 38 new COVID-19 cases reported Friday, up from 16 the previous day. Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for the region, said that brings the local total number of cases to 5,094 with 4,842 resolved. The area’s death toll is unchanged at 95. An outbreak has been declared at Aylmer Retirement Residence where seven residents and one staff member has become infected. There are currently 157 active cases. As of Thursday, 74.5 per cent of area residents have had one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 72.2 per cent have received both doses.
Ontario recorded more than 700 new COVID-19 cases for a second straight day.
Public health officials confirmed 793 new infections Friday, up from 711 cases logged on Thursday, 512 cases on Wednesday, 481 on Tuesday, and 522 on Monday.
Preliminary data shows of the 793 new cases reported in Ontario over the past 24 hours, 385 were not vaccinated, 22 had received one dose, and 323 were fully vaccinated. There were 63 infected individuals whose vaccination status was not known.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now stands at 610,222.
There were four additional deaths reported, leaving the provincial death toll at 9,959.
Hospitals in Ontario have 269 COVID-19 positive patients admitted to general wards. There are 128 patients in intensive care and 107 are on ventilators. Of those on the general wards, 95 were unvaccinated, 12 were partially vaccinated, and 64 were fully vaccinated. Only 12 of those in ICU were fully vaccinated.
The number of resolved cases are up by 567 to 595,169. There are currently 5,094 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 30,515 COVID-19 tests were processed, down from 34,347 the previous day. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 2.6 per cent.
To date, the province has administered more than 22.7 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with 11,187,346 people having received both shots required to be fully inoculated. As expected, Health Canada approved the use of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids aged five to 11-years-old.