The Middlesex London Health Unit is reporting its first COVID-19 related death in two and a half weeks.
No details about the deceased individual, such as age or whether they were connected to long-term care home, were provided due to a technical issue with the provincial reporting database. This is the first death linked to the virus in the area since February 13. It brings the local death toll up to 184.
There were 25 new laboratory confirmed cases in London and Middlesex County on Wednesday, up from 12 on Tuesday and five on Monday. The region's total case count since the pandemic began is now 6,219.
Updated information regarding resolved and active cases were not available because of the provincewide outage of Ontario's case and contact management system. The health unit anticipates the reporting issue will be resolved by Thursday.
Hospitalizations in the area remain low. The London Health Sciences Centre has fewer than five inpatients with COVID-19 in its care and fewer than five staff members have tested positive.
An outbreak was declared Tuesday at a Western University residence. Seven students who live in Essex Hall have tested positive for the virus since Saturday. The infected students are in quarantine and there is no evidence that the spread was caused by a social gathering, the health unit said.
Another case of COVID-19 was identified at a London public school. On Wednesday, the Thames Valley reported an infection linked to Bonaventure Public School. The school will remain open and only those considered to have been in close contact of the affected individual will be contacted. Currently, the school board is reporting seven active cases of the virus at five area schools.
Vaccination bookings for seniors 80 and over again filled up fast. When the online and phone booking systems reopened at 8 a.m. Wednesday they were again met with huge demand. All available appointments for March 17 in the London area were taken by 10 a.m.
Just like Middlesex-London, Southwestern Public Health was unable to update its COVID-19 information dashboard online because of the provincial reporting system outage. The health unit for Elgin and Oxford counties did not provide any daily numbers Wednesday.
Ontario has marked another grim milestone. The province's COVID-19 death toll surpassed 7,000 on Wednesday.
Seventeen additional deaths were recorded over the past 24 hours to bring the death toll to 7,014.
According to public health officials, 958 new infections were also confirmed Wednesday. That is up from 966 new cases on Tuesday, but down from 1,023 on Monday.
Regions with the highest case counts were Toronto with 249, followed by Peel and York Region with 164 and 92 cases.
The daily epidemiologic summary indicates Ontario had ten more lab confirmed cases of the U.K. variant, known as B.1.1.7. for a total of 552. There were zero new cases of the South African variant, known as B.1.351 and or the Brazil variant, P.1. That leaves the case count for those two strains at 27 and three.
The province’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 303,763.
Ontario’s hospitals are currently dealing with 668 patients with COVID-19. Of those, 274 are in intensive care and 188 are on ventilators.
Resolved cases across the province are up to 286,352. That leaves 10,397 known active cases of the virus in Ontario.
There were 52,613 COVID-19 tests processed over the last 24 hour period, up from 30,800 the previous day. Ontario’s current positivity rate is 2.4 per cent.
The province has administered 754,419 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Tuesday night. A total of 266,710 people in Ontario have received their second dose of the vaccine and are considered fully inoculated.
