The daily tally of new cases of COVID-19 climbed to a high on Friday not seen in the London-area since mid-August.
The Middlesex London Health Unit recorded 38 new infections over the past 24 hours. That is up from 27 on Thursday and 22 on Wednesday. The single-day case count has not exceeded 33 since August 21 when 49 cases were logged. For the past several weeks daily case numbers have mainly ranged from the low teens to the mid-20s.
The city and county’s total caseload since the pandemic began now sits at 14,975.
There has not been a COVID-19 related death in the area since November 22. That leaves the death toll unchanged at 252.
The number of resolved cases rose by 16 to 14,530. There are 193 known active cases in the region, up 25 over the past 24 hours.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) has 13 COVID-19 inpatients in its care, down five from Thursday. Of those, six 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.
The only outbreaks that remain in London and Middlesex County are at Western University’s Saugeen-Maitland Hall and Fanshawe College’s Merlin House Residence. As of the weekend, it will have been one week since those outbreaks were first declared.
Nearly 49 per cent of the 546 new COVID-19 cases reported since October 22 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 55 per cent of all hospitalizations locally over the last six weeks.
In Elgin and Oxford counties, there were 29 new COVID-19 cases reported Friday, the same number as the previous day. Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for the region, said that brings the local total number of cases to 5,440 with 5,164 resolved. For a second day in a row, there was a COVID-19 death reported in the two counties. That brings the area’s death toll to 100. There are currently 176 active cases. An outbreak at Aylmer Retirement Residence has been declared over. That leaves one outbreak at an area seniors' facility (Caressant Care On Bonnie Place in St. Thomas) and outbreaks at five local schools (Woodstock Christian School, Pierre Elliott Trudeau French Immersion Public in St. Thomas and Glendale High and St. Joseph’s Catholic in Tillsonburg, and Immanuel Christian School in Aylmer).
Ontario recorded it’s highest daily COVID-19 case count in six months on Friday.
Public health officials confirmed 1,031 new infections over the past 24 hours, up from 959 cases logged on Thursday, 780 cases on Wednesday, 687 on Tuesday, and 788 on Monday. The province has not seen a single-day case increase this high since May 30 when 1,033 infections were recorded.
Preliminary data shows of the 1,031 new cases reported in Ontario over the past 24 hours, 504 were not vaccinated, 27 had received one dose, and 442 were fully vaccinated. There were 58 infected individuals whose vaccination status was not known.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now stands at 621,260.
There were four additional deaths reported, leaving the provincial death toll at 10,016.
Hospitals in Ontario have 286 COVID-19 positive patients admitted to general wards. There are 146 patients in intensive care and 127 are on ventilators. Of those on the general wards, 88 were unvaccinated, 12 were partially vaccinated, and 61 were fully vaccinated. Only 27 of those in ICU were fully vaccinated.
The number of resolved cases are up by 742 to 604,027. There are currently 7,217 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 39,748 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 2.9 per cent.
To date, the province has administered 23,832,474 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with more than 11.2 million people having received both shots required to be fully inoculated. The percentage of children aged 5 to 11 who have received their first dose since that age group became eligible last week is 14.4 per cent.