Following a one day jump in daily COVID-19 cases, new infections in the London region fell back to single digits on Monday.
The Middlesex London Health Unit said there were just five new cases confirmed over the past 24 hours. That is down from 21 on Sunday. Case numbers in the area have been trending downward since mid-February and the latest decrease comes on the same day the city and county move from the red-control to orange-restrict tier of the province's COVID-19 response framework. More restrictions were eased at midnight when the region moved into the orange zone. A list of what is permitted under orange can be found by clicking here.
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 6,182 COVID-19 cases in the area.
While there has not been a death related to the virus in Middlesex-London since February 13, the death toll did go up by one on Monday. Public health officials added a man in his 80s who lived in long-term care to the total. The man died in late January but his death was not entered into the case management database until now. The region's death toll is now 182.
Resolved cases rose to 5,903, leaving just 97 known active cases.
An outbreak at Parkwood Institute Mental Health Care was declared over on Sunday. That leaves five outbreaks at local long-term care and retirement homes, the newest of which is at Richmond Woods Retirement Residence.
Schools and preschools in the region are outbreak free, although there are six cases at four schools and one preschool. The Thames Valley District School Board reported one new case of COVID-19 at Central Public School in Woodstock. The school will remain open and only those contacted by the health unit are considered close contacts of the affected individual.
Fewer than five inpatients at the London Health Sciences Centre are being treated for COVID-19.
Daily cases were also back down on Monday in Elgin and Oxford counties. Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for the two, reported three new infections for a total case count of 2,537. The drop comes after the region recorded a 31 case increase on Sunday, largely due to an outbreak at the Ontario Police College in Aylmer. The death toll is unchanged at 67 with no additional deaths reported Monday. The only local seniors facility dealing with an outbreak is Aylmer Retirement Residence The health unit said the total number of resolved cases in the counties is 2,385, leaving 85 known active cases.
Provincially, the number of new cases remained above 1,000.
Public health officials logged 1,023 new infections across the province Monday, down slightly from 1,062 on Sunday, 1,185 on Saturday, and 1,258 on Friday.
Regions with the most new cases were Toronto with 280, Peel with 182, and Ottawa with 72.
According to the province’s daily epidemiologic summary, there were seven more confirmed cases of the U.K. variant, known as B.1.1.7 to bring the total to 535. The number of lab confirmed cases of the South African variant, known as B.1.351 and the Brazil variant, P.1. are unchanged at 27 and three.
The province’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 301,839.
Six deaths were reported over the past 24 hours, to increase the province’s death toll to 6,986.
At hospitals in Ontario, there are 659 patients with COVID-19. Of those, 280 are in intensive care and 175 are on ventilators.
The number of resolved cases rose to 284,283. There are currently 10,570 known active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 35,015 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s current positivity rate is 3.1 per cent.
The province has administered 704,695 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine since Sunday night. There are 263,214 people in Ontario who have received their second dose of the vaccine to be considered fully inoculated.
