There was another significant jump in the number of new COVID-19 cases recorded Monday in London and Middlesex County.
Laboratory testing confirmed 57 new infections in the area over the previous 24 hours, the Middlesex London Health Unit said. That is down from 78 on Sunday, but is in line with an overall increase in cases that began last week. The region has not seen daily cases numbers this high since mid-January. Variants of concern and a lack of physical distancing are being blamed for the rise in cases.
The recent case spike has led the province to shift Middlesex London to the red-control level of Ontario's COVID-19 response framework. With that comes a tightening of restrictions including a lower cap on social gatherings. The move to red from the orange-restrict tier was requested by the region's medical officer of health and takes effect at 12:01 Tuesday.
Since the start of the pandemic, the region's total number of cases has risen to 6,952. Of those, 6,332 have been resolved. The death toll locally is unchanged at 186, with no additional COVID-19 related deaths reported on Monday.
Screened positive variant cases rose by 21 on Monday to 132. There have been six confirmed variant cases in the region.
Outbreaks continue at three area seniors' facilities, one London public school (Woodland Heights), and at three Western University residences.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) is once again outbreak free after the cases on the University Hospital U4 Medicine 1 unit were resolved over the weekend. The LHSC currently has 16 inpatients with COVID-19 in its care, fewer than five are in the intensive care unit. There are fewer than five staff members who have contracted the virus.
Known active cases in the area now stand at 434.
Vaccine eligibility in the region opened up to people 70 and older on Monday. The health unit said it had 5,000 appointments immediately available for anyone born in 1951 or earlier. More vaccine bookings for the 70-plus crowd would be made available each day by 7 a.m. Appointments to get the shot can be booked online at www.covidvaccinelm.ca or by phone at 226-289-3560.
New cases in Elgin and Oxford counties rose by 56 on Monday. However, that number included the cases from Saturday and Sunday, as Southwestern Public Health has stopped updating its COVID-19 dashboard on the weekends. The latest infections brings the two counties total case count to 2,797. The death toll went up by one to 69, the second death in the region since Friday. There are currently no active cases at long-term care or retirement homes in the area. The health unit said the total number of resolved cases is 2,636, leaving 92 known active cases in the two counties.
Provincially, the number of new cases was just below 2,100.
Public health officials logged 2,094 new infections across the province Monday, down from 2,448 on Sunday, and 2,453 on Saturday.
Regions with the most new cases were Toronto with 618, Peel with 368, York Region with 277, Ottawa with 132 and Durham with 104.
According to the province’s daily epidemiologic summary, Ontario identified 585 variants of the virus over the last 24 hours for a total of 18,907. Of those, 1,749 have been confirmed as the U.K. variant, known as B.1.1.7., 63 cases are the South African variant, B.1.351, and 82 are the Brazil variant, P.1.
The province’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 345,234.
Ten deaths were reported over the past 24 hours, to increase the province’s death toll to 7,337.
At hospitals in Ontario, there are 841 patients with COVID-19. That includes, 382 in intensive care and 236 on ventilators.
The number of resolved cases rose to 318,932. There are currently 18,965 known active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, more than 39,000 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s current positivity rate has risen to 6.1 per cent. It has not been this high since January 19 when it hit 6.8 per cent.
The province has administered 2,031,735 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine since Sunday night. Nearly 311,248 people in Ontario have received their second dose of the vaccine to be considered fully inoculated.
