The number of COVID-19 positive patients in the intensive care unit in London has nearly doubled since the start of the weekend.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) said Monday that there are 21 inpatients with COVID-19 in the ICU, up from 12 on Friday. In total, the hospital network currently has 89 inpatients with the virus, an increase from 78 over the past 72 hours.
For the first time since the pandemic began, the LHSC has specified how many patients are in hospital to receive treatment for COVID-19, versus how many are there due to other ailments but also have tested positive. Of the 89 COVID positive inpatients, 68 are being treated for the virus.
There are 434 hospital workers who have tested positive for COVID-19, that is down four from Friday.
Outbreaks remain at University Hospital’s 7IP Clinical Neurosciences (wings 100, 202, 204, 210, 220-232, and 300) there are 12 confirmed patient cases and five or fewer confirmed and 20 potential staff infections. At Victoria Hospital’s Adult Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit five or fewer patients have contracted COVID-19 and there are five or fewer confirmed and nine possible employee infections.
The Middlesex London Health Unit logged 1,124 new infections and four additional deaths since Friday.
There were 223 new cases recorded on Monday, 425 new cases on Sunday, and 476 new cases on Saturday. The daily case count for Monday is the first time since December 27 single-day case numbers have been below 250. However, public health officials caution they are an underestimate of community spread due to eligibility changes that limit who can receive a test.
The area’s total case count stands at 24,300 since the pandemic began.
Four more people in London and Middlesex County succumbed to COVID-19 over the weekend, two on Saturday and two on Sunday. Their deaths bring the death toll up to 263. There were no deaths related to the virus reported on Monday.
Resolved cases are up by 1,091 to 19,541. The number of active cases in the city and county went up by 55 since Friday to 4,496 on Monday. That is the highest number of active cases the region has had during the pandemic.
An outbreak at Longworth Retirement Residence was declared over on Monday. Others remain at 26 other local seniors’ facilities.
Southwestern Public Health, the health unit that covers Elgin and Oxford counties, reported 387 new cases since Friday. The latest cases bring the two counties total case count to 8,544. There were two additional deaths recorded, to bring the death toll up to 119. The health unit said the total number of resolved cases in the area is 6,966, leaving 1,459 known active cases.
Provincially, the number of people with COVID-19 in hospital remained above 2,400 as daily case counts declined.
Public health officials reported 9,706 new infections over the past 24 hours. That is down from 11,959 on Sunday and 13,362 on Sunday. Single-day case counts are considered to be an underestimation of community spread as the Ford government restricted eligibility for publicly-funded COVID-19 tests at the end of December. Currently, PCR testing is only available for high-risk individuals who are symptomatic or are at risk of severe illness from COVID-19.
The latest cases put Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic to 888,297.
There were 12 more COVID-19 related deaths reported in Ontario on Monday to bring the death toll up to 10,378.
At hospitals in Ontario, there are 2,467 patients with COVID-19, up by 48 since Sunday. The total number of patients in the intensive care unit is 438, up from 248 a week ago. Those figures could also be higher than reported as not all hospitals release current numbers over the weekend.
The number of resolved cases are up by 6,993 to 737,396. There are currently 140,523 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 40,692 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 26.7 per cent, roughly the same as this time last week.
There have been 28,551,554 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered in Ontario as of Sunday night. Just over 91 per cent of Ontarians 12 and older have received one dose of the vaccine, while 88.4 per cent have been given their second dose to be considered fully inoculated. To date, more than 4.7 million booster doses have been administered across the province.