COVID-19 has claimed the lives of two more people in Middlesex-London, while nearly 100 other have become infected.
The Middlesex London Health Unit said Wednesday a man and woman in their 80s are the latest to succumb to the virus. The elderly man was a resident at a local long-term care home. The woman was not connected to either long-term care or a retirement facility.
The region has now had 35 deaths linked to COVID-19 throughout December, matching April for the deadliest month of the pandemic. The death toll is now 102.
The health unit confirmed there were 92 new cases of the virus identified on Wednesday. Down slightly from the single-day record of 100 reported in Middlesex-London the previous day. The total case count has increased to 3,196.
The London Health Sciences Centre has 11 more COVID-19 patients in its care for a total of 38. Ten of those are listed in the intensive care unit. LHSC's Victoria Hospital has just one unit with an active outbreak - the burns and plastics unit. Less than five patients and less than five staff members have tested positive due to the outbreak. A deadly outbreak that has sickened staff and patients at University Hospital was declared over on Tuesday.
An outbreak at Sisters of St. Joseph long-term care facility has been resolved. That leaves ongoing outbreaks at 11 local long-term care and retirement homes. Facilities dealing with outbreaks are Country Terrace, Dearness Home, Earls Court Village, Extendicare, Glendale Crossing, McGarrell Place, Middlesex Terrace, Mount Hope Centre for Long-Term Care, Oakcrossing Retirement Living, People Care Oak Crossing, and Westmount Gardens.
The Thames Valley District school board reported new COVID-19 cases late Tuesday at a school in London and another in Dorchester. Two positive cases were confirmed at Lord Dorchester Secondary in Dorchester and one case at Princess Elizabeth Public in London. All schools are currently closed for the winter break.
Public health investigators are continuing to try to pinpoint how COVID-19 was able to spread so freely within a northeast London apartment complex, promoting an outbreak warning. Since December 11, there have been 46 cases at Maple Ridge on the Parc on Arbor Glen Crescent. The health unit has said it is working to identify any practices, events or environmental factors that could have allowed the virus to spread.
Fifty more recoveries were reported over the last 24 hours to bring the region's total number of resolved cases to 2,464. Currently, there are 630 active cases in the city and county.
In Elgin and Oxford, there were 29 new COVID-19 infections reported on Wednesday. Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for the two counties, said the latest cases bring the total case count to 1,215. There were 40 recoveries for a total of 940 resolved cases since the start of the pandemic. The death toll is unchanged at 12. There are currently 263 active cases in the area.
For the second straight day, Ontario has set a new single-day record high for new COVID-19 cases.
The province logged 2,923 cases Wednesday, up from the previous record high of 2,553 set Tuesday.
Of the new cases, 2,149 were in the hotspots of Toronto (998), Peel (441), York Region (408), Durham (158), and Windsor-Essex (144).
There have been 178,831 COVID-19 cases in Ontario since March.
Despite the high daily case count, testing in the province continues to lag with only 39,210 tests processed in the last 24 hours.
There were 19 additional deaths linked to COVID-19 in Ontario Wednesday. Thirteen of those deaths were among residents of long-term care homes. The provincial death toll is now 4,474.
The number of resolved cases rose to 153,799.
There are currently 1,177 COVID-19 infected patients in hospitals across the province, including 323 in the intensive care unit and 204 on ventilators.
The province’s positivity rate currently sits at 8.4 per cent.