The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit has identified three possible COVID-19 exposures in the community, including two on Transit Windsor buses.
Anyone who took the 1A or 1C bus on September 21 at 1 p.m., or between 3:30 p.m. and 4 p.m., should watch for symptoms of the virus. The 1A route runs between Devonshire Mall and the International Transit Terminal downtown, while the 1C goes from the neighbourhood of Forest Glade to Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare on Prince Road.
The health unit also identified a possible exposure at Word of Life Community Church at 1771 Talbot Road in Ruthven. That was last Saturday, September 25, between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.
Over the past two days, another 86 cases were confirmed in Windsor-Essex. Since the health unit was closed on Thursday for the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, it did not issue a report that day. There were 43 on Thursday and 43 on Friday.
Of the new cases, officials are still investigating how 17 people were infected. Another 34 had close contact with a previously confirmed case, 25 caught the virus in the community. There are ten related to an outbreak.
There were also two more deaths bringing the local death toll from COVID-19 since March 2020 to 456. A man in his 50s and a woman in her 60s were the latest fatalities.
There are currently 297 active cases across the region, with 194 involving a variant of concern.
During a weekly update on Friday, Manager of Epidemiology and Evaluation. Ramsey D'Souza said the region's weekly case rate had fallen to 65.2 for every 100,000 residents, a slight increase from last week when he said it was 66.4.
The percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus is up slightly from last week's report when 3.9 per cent of those tested for COVID-19 had positive results. Over the past seven days, it was 4.7 per cent. Ramsey noted that is almost double the provincial average of 2.4.
For the second update in a row, the replication rate has not really changed. It was 0.9, and now it is 0.88, meaning each new case results in less than one other in the community.