The daily tally of new cases of COVID-19 dropped slightly in the London-area on Friday.
The Middlesex London Health Unit recorded 13 new infections over the past 24 hours. That is down from 20 on Thursday and 18 on Wednesday. The number of single-day cases has now been in the double-digits for 11 straight days.
The city and county’s total caseload since the pandemic began now sits at 14,813.
There has not been a COVID-19 related death in the area since Monday. That leaves the death toll unchanged at 252.
The number of resolved cases rose by ten to 14,424. There are 137 known active cases in the region, up four over the past 24 hours.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) has 22 COVID-19 inpatients in its care, down two from Thursday. Of those, ten 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.
Schools, daycares, and seniors facilities in London and Middlesex County are currently outbreak free.
More than 54 per cent of the 489 new COVID-19 cases reported since October 15 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 56.3 per cent of all hospitalizations locally over the last six weeks.
In Elgin and Oxford counties, there were 24 new COVID-19 cases reported Friday, down from 34 the previous day. Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for the region, said that brings the local total number of cases to 5,275 with 4,997 resolved. The area’s death toll is unchanged at 97. There are currently 181 active cases. It has now been a week since an outbreak was declared at Aylmer Retirement Residence. Eight resident and two staff member infections are linked to the outbreak. The closure of Port Burwell Public School has been extended by a few days due to an ongoing outbreak there. The Thames Valley District School Board has announced the school will now reopen on December 2, three days later than expected. Elsewhere the TVDSB have identified possible cases at Annandale Public School and East Oxford Public School. Students there have been learning online since November 19. There are eight active cases linked to the school.
Ontario recorded it's highest daily COVID-19 case count since the beginning of September on Friday.
Public health officials confirmed 927 new infections over the past 24 hours, up from 748 cases logged on Thursday, 591 cases on Wednesday, 613 on Tuesday, and 627 on Monday. The province has not seen a single-day case increase this high since September 4 when 944 infections were recorded.
Preliminary data shows of the 927 new cases reported in Ontario over the past 24 hours, 467 were not vaccinated, 27 had received one dose, and 378 were fully vaccinated. There were 55 infected individuals whose vaccination status was not known.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now stands at 615,197.
There were six additional deaths reported, leaving the provincial death toll at 9,991. One of the deaths reported on Friday actually occurred more than a month ago but had not been added to the total number of deaths until now.
Hospitals in Ontario have 268 COVID-19 positive patients admitted to general wards. There are 140 patients in intensive care and 121 are on ventilators. Of those on the general wards, 89 were unvaccinated, nine were partially vaccinated, and 47 were fully vaccinated. Only ten of those in ICU were fully vaccinated.
The number of resolved cases are up by 666 to 599,399. There are currently 5,807 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 33,901 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 3 per cent.
To date, the province has administered 22,865,543 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with more than 11.2 million people having received both shots required to be fully inoculated.