Four more deaths among seniors in local long-term care homes and 143 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed in the London region on Monday.
The Middlesex London Health Unit said one woman in her 90s and three men, two in their 90s and one in his 70s, succumbed to the virus over the past 24 hours. Their deaths bring the area death toll up to 127. Twenty-four of those deaths have occurred since the start of the year.
Public health officials also identified 143 more positive COVID-19 cases since Sunday. That is up from the 116 reported Sunday and the 128 recorded on Saturday. The region's total case count stands at 4,516.
Outbreaks have been confirmed at 13 long-term care or retirement homes as of Monday. The latest facilities to declare outbreaks are Queen's Village in London, Strathmere Lodge in Strathroy, and Chelsey Park Retirement Community in London.
The London Health Sciences Centre has outbreaks on two units at Victoria Hospital. Less than five staffers and patients have contracted the virus with no deaths associated to the outbreak. LHSC currently has 39 inpatients with COVID-19, 12 of whom are in the intensive care unit. Twenty-seven staff members have contracted the virus.
Over the weekend, the health unit also said there was a COVID-19 outbreak at the Men's Mission on York Street. There have been nine people, including five employees, test positive for the virus at the shelter since December 17. Five of those cases were confirmed within the past week.
Resolved cases in London and Middlesex County have gone up by 47, for a total of 3,084 recoveries since the pandemic began.
Currently, there are 1,305 active cases in the region.
Southwestern Public health had another two deaths and 27 new cases on Monday. The health unit for Elgin and Oxford counties said the latest numbers bring its total case count to 1,761 and its death toll to 32. There are active cases at eight local long-term care and retirement homes. The worst being the outbreak at Maple Manor in Tillsonburg were 80 residents and 45 staff members have tested positive. There are 11 deaths linked to the outbreak. An ongoing outbreak has also infected 37 residents and 32 employees at PeopleCare Tavistock. Five deaths are connected to that outbreak.
Recoveries in the two counties went up by 21 to 1,346. That leaves 383 cases active.
Ontario hit a grim milestone Monday as it recorded its 5,000th death.
Public health officials said there were 29 additional COVID-19 related deaths across the province since Sunday. That includes 14 deaths associated with long-term care homes. The latest deaths bring the province's total number of deaths since the pandemic began in March to 5,012.
Ontario also logged 3,338 new COVID-19 cases Monday, down from the record breaking 3,945 the previous day.
Toronto had the highest number of cases of any city in the province with 931. Peel recorded 531, York Region had 241, Niagara reported 168, and Waterloo had 165.
Ontario’s total case count now sits at 219,120.
There is now a record number of people suffering from the virus in hospital across the province. As of Monday, 1,563 Ontarians are being treated in hospital. Of those, 387 are in intensive care and 268 are on ventilators.
The number of resolved cases rose to 183,476. There are currently 30,632 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 46,403 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s positivity rate is roughly 7.7 per cent.
