While COVID-19 data coming from London's hospitals is encouraging, the number of deaths from the virus went up by five in the city and county since Friday.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) said Monday it has 143 inpatients with COVID-19, a decrease of ten over the past 72 hours. According to the LHSC, 90 of its COVID positive inpatients are being treated for the virus, while the remaining 53 are being treated for other ailments but have tested positive for COVID.
The intensive care unit has 23 inpatients with COVID-19, up one since Friday. ICU admissions have been in the low 20s for the past two weeks.
There are 214 hospital workers who have tested positive for COVID-19, down from 297 on Friday. Active cases among hospital workers hit a record 512 on January 12 and have been on the decline ever since.
An outbreak on University Hospital's 7IP Clinical Neurosciences wing was declared over on Monday. That leaves just six active outbreaks at University and Victoria hospitals.
The Middlesex London Health Unit recorded five deaths and 592 new infections over the weekend .
There were 140 new cases recorded on Monday, 201 new cases on Sunday, and 251 new cases on Saturday. However, public health officials caution that single-day case numbers 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 27,861 since the pandemic began.
A man in his 70s is the latest person to succumb to the virus, the health unit said Monday. His death is in addition to four others in London and Middlesex County on Saturday and brings the death toll since the pandemic began up to 287.
Resolved cases are up by 745 to 25,196. The number of active cases locally went down by 147 since Friday to 2,377 on Monday.
Southwestern Public Health, the health unit that covers Elgin and Oxford counties, reported 249 new cases since Friday. The latest cases bring the two counties total case count to 9,779. There were two additional deaths recorded, a man in his 80s in Oxford and a man in his 60s in Elgin. Their deaths, which were not associated with an active outbreak, bring the death toll to 132. The health unit said the total number of resolved cases in the area is 8,844, leaving 803 known active cases.
Provincially, the total number of COVID-19 deaths surpassed 11,000 as lab confirmed cases climbed above 1,000,000.
There were 4,790 new infections logged over the past 24 hours. However, 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. The latest cases put Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic to 1,001,455.
There were 36 more COVID-19 related deaths reported in Ontario on Monday to bring the death toll up to 11,004. One death from more than a month ago was removed from the total.
Ontario public health officials reported 3,861 people with the virus in hospital on Monday, up 64 since the previous day. Intensive care unit (ICU) admissions are up by 11 to 615. Those figures could be higher than reported as not all hospitals release current numbers over the weekend, Health Minister Christine Elliott reminded.
The number of resolved cases are up by 6,924 to 924,947.
In the last 24 hour period, 20,716 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 18.4 per cent, down from 24.2 per cent at this time last week.
There have been 30,100,272 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered in Ontario as of Sunday night. Nearly 92 per cent of Ontarians 12 and older have received one dose of the vaccine, while 88.9 per cent have been given their second dose to be considered fully inoculated. To date, more than 6 million Ontarians have received a booster shot.