COVID-19 cases among hospital workers and hospitalizations in the London-area went up for a fourth straight day on Friday.
London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) reported another eight staffers tested positive for the virus over the past 24 hours, increasing the total number of employee cases to 226. That is up from 208 at this time last week.
Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 went up by one to 33, according to figures released by LHSC. Hospitalizations have been on the rise since the start of the week and rose above 30 for the first time in more than two weeks on Thursday. The LHSC noted 15 of the 33 COVID-19 positive people in its care were admitted for treatment of the virus. The 18 remaining people came to the hospital for other reasons and tested positive for the virus.
The hospital network has five or fewer patients with COVID listed in intensive care and Children's Hospital has five or fewer inpatients with the virus.
Another 95 new cases were confirmed over the past 24 hours by the Middlesex London Health Unit, down from 119 on Thursday. However, the Middlesex London Health Unit has noted that single-day case counts are likely an underestimate of the true number of people in the region with the virus, due to changes made to testing eligibility.
The total number of confirmed infections in the region since the pandemic began is now 34,119.
The health unit said there were no additional deaths linked to the virus on Friday. It is the first time since Monday the death toll did not increase in London and Middlesex County. The local death toll currently stands at 361.
The number of resolved cases rose to 32,935. There are 823 known active cases in the region, up 23 over the past 24 hours.
In Elgin and Oxford counties, there were 95 new COVID-19 cases reported Friday. Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for the region, said that brings the local total number of cases to 12,060 with 11,564 resolved. The COVID-19 death toll locally was unchanged at 155. There are currently 341 known active cases in the two counties.
COVID-19 hospitalizations across the province went down slightly on Friday.
Public health officials confirmed there are currently 804 COVID-19 positive people in hospitals in Ontario. That is down three from the previous day. However, hospitalizations remain well above where they were at this time last week when 667 were reported.
Of the 804 in hospital Friday, roughly 49 per cent were admitted because of the virus, while 51 per cent were admitted for other reasons and tested positive for the virus.
In intensive care units, there are 167 patients with COVID-19, up one from Thursday.
Ontario logged 3,519 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday. Public health officials have cautioned the daily counts are an underestimate of the spread of the virus in the province due to limited PCR testing eligibility.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now stands at 1,166,128.
There were 18 additional deaths reported over the past 24 hours, pushing the death toll up to 12,451. The province said nine of the deaths occurred within the past month and nine occurred more than a month ago.
The number of resolved cases are up by 2,173 to 1,131,601.
In the last 24 hour period, 17,468 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is now 16.4 per cent, up from 12.6 per cent last Friday.
To date, the province has administered 32,073,847 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with 90.9 per cent of people 12 and older having received two shots. More than 7.1 million Ontarians have received a booster shot.