The Middlesex London Health Unit reported 19 new COVID-19 cases on Friday.
While that is up from 12 the previous day, it is below Wednesday's 25 infections. The region's total COVID-19 case count stands at 6,250.
The number of laboratory confirmed variant cases is unchanged at four, the health unit said.
There have been no deaths related to the virus in the city or county in two days, leaving the death toll at 184.
Five local long-term care and retirement homes have COVID-19 outbreaks. Strathmere Lodge in Strathroy was the most recent to declare an outbreak.
On Friday, the Thames Valley District School Board reported two cases of COVID-19 at Sir Frederick Banting Secondary School. Only those contacted by the health unit are considered close contacts of the affected individual. An outbreak was declared at St. Mark's Catholic school in London on Thursday after two positive cases were identified. There are a dozen infections at seven London-area schools. All schools remain open.
There has been a slight increase in the number of people in hospital with COVID-19. The London Health Sciences Centre reported having six COVID-19 positive inpatients in its care. Fewer than five of them are listed in intensive care.
Nine more people in Middlesex-London have recovered from the virus, putting resolved cases up to 5,941. The number of known active cases remained above 100 for a third straight day with 125.
In Elgin and Oxford counties, seven new infections were reported Friday. Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for the region, said that brings its total caseload since the pandemic began to 2,561. There have been no new COVID-19 deaths in the area since February 20. That leaves the death toll at 67. The only outbreak is at Bethany Care Home in Norwich, where there has been one resident case. Resolved cases in the region are up to 2,412. There are currently 82 known active cases in the two counties.
Ontario’s daily case count shot back up above 1,200 for the first time in a week.
Public health officials logged 1,250 new infections across the province Friday. It follows three straight days of daily case numbers in the triple-digits. There were 994 new infections Thursday, 958 on Wednesday and 966 on Tuesday. Last time daily numbers reached above 1,200 was last Friday when 1,258 cases were reported in Ontario.
Toronto had the province’s highest daily number of cases over the past 24 hours with 337, that was followed by Peel with 167, and York Region with 129.
Ontario has confirmed 155 additional cases of the variant first discovered in the U.K., known as B.1.1.7, for a total of 799. There were zero new cases of the variant first associated with South Africa, known as B.1.351. and the variant first found in Brazil, known as P.1. That leaves the totals for those variants at 31 and three.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now stands at 306,007.
There were 22 more deaths reported Friday. The province’s death toll is now 7,046.
At hospitals in Ontario, there are 643 patients with COVID-19. Of those, 280 are in intensive care and 183 are on ventilators.
The number of resolved cases rose to 288,583. There are currently 10,378 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 64,748 COVID-19 tests were processed. The province’s positivity rate is roughly 2.3 per cent.
To date, the province has administered 820,714 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with 269,063 people having received both shots required to be fully inoculated. Those numbers are expected to start climbing even faster now that Canada has approved the single-shot COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. The approval gives the country four different vaccines to rely on. The other three are the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca vaccines.
