The London-area's daily COVID-19 case count has been in the single-digits for five straight days, as the number of active cases continues to drop.
The Middlesex London Health Unit reported five new infections on Monday. That is down from seven new cases on Sunday but up from two on Saturday. Single-day case numbers in the region have remained out of the double-digits for all but one day of the past 11. There were ten new cases recorded last Wednesday. Resolved cases in the city and county are up by seven to 12,277. Currently, there are 35 active cases in the region. That is the lowest the local active case count has been since last fall.
The area’s total case count stands at 12,538 since the pandemic began.
The death toll is unchanged at 226, with no additional COVID-19 related deaths locally since Saturday.
There were four more cases involving variants of concern identified in the region since Friday, for a total of 3,467. The Alpha B.1.1.7 variant, which originated in the U.K., now accounts for 3,348 of the cases. There are 94 cases of the Gamma P.1. variant from Brazil, two cases identified as the Beta B.1.351 variant from South Africa, and 19 cases of the B.1.617 variant and sublineages of that strain that originated in India. There are 189 cases that have tested positive for a mutation.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) has ten inpatients with COVID-19. Of those in hospital, fewer than five are in the intensive care unit. Fewer than five patients transferred in from other regions are in the ICU. An outbreak remains on University Hospital’s 8TU – transplant unit. Fewer than five patients and fewer than five employees have contracted the virus.
As of Monday, the health unit began offering fast-tracked second dose vaccine appointments to anyone 12 and older. That means anyone who got their first mRNA (Pfizer or Moderna) shot at least 28 days ago can now re-book an earlier second dose appointment. Those who got Astra Zeneca as their first shot still have to wait eight weeks for their second. The health unit said it would have an additional 50,000 appointments available as of Monday morning, with another 6,600 being added each day. Appointments can be booked online at www.covidvaccinelm.ca or by phone at 226-289-3560.
The number of new cases in Elgin and Oxford counties was 11 on Monday. The number includes infections identified both Saturday and Sunday, as Southwestern Public Health does not update its COVID-19 dashboard on weekends. The latest cases bring the two counties total case count to 3,882. There were no additional deaths recorded over the past two days, leaving the death toll unchanged at 83. There are currently no active institutional outbreaks locally. The health unit said the total number of resolved cases in the area is 3,775, leaving 24 known active cases.
Provincially, the number of new COVID-19 cases fell to its lowest level since mid-September.
Public health officials reported 210 infections on Monday. That is down from 287 on Sunday, 346 on Saturday, and 256 on Friday. The last time the daily case count was as low as it was on Monday was on September 13.
Regions with the most new cases over the past 24 hours were Toronto with 37, Waterloo with 26, Grey Bruce with 25, and Peel Region with 15.
According to the province’s daily epidemiologic summary, Ontario identified 83 cases of the B.1.1.7. variant, or Alpha as it is now known, since the previous day for a total of 143,350. There were 35 more cases of the P.1 variant, Gamma, for a total of 4,428, while the number of new cases of the B.1.351 variant, Beta, is up 68 for a total of 1,273. There were 286 more cases identified as the B.1.617 (Delta) variant, originally found in India for a total of 1,629.
The province’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 544,414.
Three deaths were reported over the past 24 hours, to increase the province’s death toll to 9,129.
At hospitals in Ontario, there are 218 patients with COVID-19. That is up 15 from the previous day. The total number of infected patients in the intensive care unit is down by two to 287 and the number of patients on ventilators is unchanged at 191. ICU numbers include patients who previously tested positive for COVID-19 but have since recovered and remain due to other complications.
The number of resolved cases rose by 326 to 532,779. There are currently 2,506 known active cases of the virus in Ontario, down from 3,454 a week ago.
In the last 24 hour period, nearly 13,100 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario’s current positivity rate sits up slightly to 1.8 per cent from 1.5 percent on Sunday.
The province has administered 14,207,510 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, as of Sunday night, that includes 180,369 doses administered over the past 24 hours. More than 4.3 million people in Ontario have received their second dose of the vaccine to be considered fully inoculated.
