The Middlesex London Health Unit recorded its 30th straight double-digit daily COVID-19 case increase on Friday.
Eighteen new infections were logged over the past 24 hours. The new cases are a decrease from the 29 new cases Thursday and 21 cases Wednesday. The number of new cases recorded daily has not been under ten since August 11 when just five infections were logged.
The city and county’s total caseload since the pandemic began now sits at 13,603.
It has now been one week since there has been a COVID-19 related death in the area. That leaves the death toll unchanged at 235.
The number of resolved cases rose by 15 to 13,159. There are 209 known active cases in the region, up two from Thursday.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) has nine COVID-19 inpatients in its care, down from ten on Thursday. Of those, five or fewer are listed in intensive care and five or fewer are admitted to Children's Hospital. Currently, there are five or fewer hospital staff who have tested positive for the virus.
The number of cases involving variants of concern identified in the area was unchanged at 4,061 on Friday. The strain racking up the most new infections over the past few weeks locally has been the B.1.617 (Delta) variant with a total of 547 cases. There has not been a single new case of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant, P.1 (Gamma) variant, or the B.1.351 (Beta) variant in over a week.
COVID-19 cases are beginning to pop-up in schools now that children have returned to the classroom. The Thames Valley District School Board confirmed one positive case each at Westfield Public School in Tillsonburg and College Avenue Secondary School in Woodstock last Thursday. There are no active cases within the London District Catholic School Board.
Just over 83 per cent of the 783 new COVID-19 cases reported since July 30 were among people who were not yet fully vaccinated. The unvaccinated and those who have only received one dose accounted for 93.5 per cent of all hospitalizations locally over the last six weeks.
There are four pop-up, walk-in clinics planned in the region this weekend. One is a "Doses Till Dark on Richmond Row" that runs from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday at the corner of Richmond and Angel street. The other three take place daily at CF Masonville Place. A full list of upcoming pop-up vaccination clinics in London and Middlesex County can be found by clicking here.
In Elgin and Oxford counties, there were seven new COVID-19 cases reported Friday, down from nine the previous day. Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for the region, said that brings the local total number of cases to 4,131 with 4,005 resolved. The death toll was unchanged at 85. Currently, there are 41 active cases in the two counties. As of Thursday, 83.5 per cent of area residents aged 12 and older have had one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 77.3 per cent have received both doses.
Ontario recorded more than 800 new COVID-19 cases for the first time since Sunday.
Public health officials confirmed 848 new infections on Friday, up from 798 cases logged on Thursday. There were 545 new cases on Wednesday, 581 on Tuesday, and 563 on Monday. Last weekend saw case counts of 811 and 944 on Sunday and Saturday.
Preliminary data shows of the 848 new cases reported in Ontario Friday, 534 were not vaccinated, 76 had received one dose, and 189 were fully vaccinated. There were 49 infected individuals whose vaccination status was not known.
Toronto had the province’s highest daily number of cases over the past 24 hours with 166, followed by Peel Region with 117, York Region with 77, and Windsor-Essex with 74.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now stands at 572, 978.
There have been four new cases of the variant originating from the U.K. in Ontario. That brings the province’s total number of B.1.1.7. (Alpha) cases to 146,444. Cases of the B.1.351 (Beta) variant and P.1 (Gamma) variant were unchanged leaving the totals at 1,501 and 5,223. The number of new cases involving the B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant is up by 748 for a total of 14,051.
There were 11 additional deaths reported to bring the provincial death toll up to 9,590. However, six of the deaths reported Friday actually occurred more than a month ago and are just now being included in the provincial numbers as part of a data cleanup.
Hospitals in Ontario have 361 COVID-19 positive patients admitted to general wards. There are 177 patients in intensive care and 153 are on ventilators. Of those on the general wards, 155 were unvaccinated, 16 were partially vaccinated, and 30 were fully vaccinated. Only 14 of those in ICU were fully vaccinated.
The number of resolved cases are up 700 to 557,265. There are currently 6,123 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 28,247 COVID-19 tests were processed, down from 29,684 the previous day. Ontario’s positivity rate held at 3.1 per cent.
To date, the province has administered more than 21 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with more than 10.1 million people having received both shots required to be fully inoculated.
