The Middlesex London Health Unit is reporting its first COVID-19 related death in a week.
A man in his 70s, who was not associated with a long-term care or retirement home, is the latest to succumb to the virus, public health officials said on Tuesday. His death is the fifth COVID-19 related death to be reported locally this month and the first since last Tuesday. It is not known whether the man had been vaccinated.
The region's death toll now stands at 224.
The health unit logged just three new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours. Three new infections were also recorded on Monday, while seven were reported on Sunday. Daily case counts have been in the single-digits now for five straight days. The total number of cases in London and Middlesex County since the pandemic began has increased to 12,510.
Another five cases have been identified as variants of concern for a total of 3,430. There are 3,337 variants of concern that have been confirmed as the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) strain and 87 have tested positive as the P.1. (Gamma) variant or a sublineage of it. The region has also had four cases of the B.1.617 (Delta) variant or a sublineage of it, and two cases of the B.1.351 (Beta) strain. There are 194 cases that have tested positive for a mutation.
There were 14 recoveries logged over the last 24 hours to bring the total number of resolved cases to 12,226.
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) has 15 patients with COVID-19 in its care, eight of whom are listed in intensive care. COVID-19 patients transferred into the LHSC from regions outside of the London-area include fewer than five acute care patients and fewer than five ICU patients. There is an active outbreak of the virus on University Hospital’s 8TU transplant unit. According to the LHSC, fewer than five patients and fewer than five employees have tested positive in relation to this outbreak. It is the hospital’s first outbreak since March.
The number of known active infections in the region dropped by ten to 60.
As of Saturday, there have been 394,467 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered in the region, which works out to 74.5 per cent of all area residents aged 18 and older having received at least one dose.
In Elgin and Oxford counties, there were two new cases reported Tuesday. Southwestern Public Health said that brings the total caseload since last spring to 3,863. There has not been a COVID-19 related death in the region in more than a week, leaving the death toll unchanged at 83. Resolved cases rose to 3,750 with 30 known active cases in the two counties remaining. Roughly 73.5 per cent of area residents have had one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 12.9 per cent have received both doses. There are no active outbreaks locally.
Ontario’s daily COVID-19 case count remained below 300 for a second consecutive day.
Public health officials logged 296 new infections across the province on Tuesday, up from 270 the previous day. However, Health Minister Christine Elliot noted the latest numbers are an overestimate of the daily counts because of a data review and cleanup of previous figures. About 80 of the cases logged on Tuesday were from last year.
Toronto had the province’s highest daily number of cases over the past 24 hours with 123, followed by Waterloo with 61, York Region with 37, and Peel with 20.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now stands at 542,764.
The province has confirmed 178 more cases of the B.1.1.7 variant first discovered in the U.K., known as Alpha, for a total of 142,393. The number of cases of the B.1.351 variant first associated with South Africa, known as Beta, held at 1,154. There are two more cases involving the P.1. variant first found in Brazil, known as Gamma, for a total of 4,256. The total number of cases identified as the B.1.617 variant, Delta, which originated in India went up by 29 to 916.
There were 60 additional deaths reported over the past two days. The previously mentioned "data cleanup" was to blame for the sharp increase. The Ministry of Health clarified only six of the deaths reported on Tuesday are new, the rest happened in previous months and were not added into the system. The provincial death toll is now 9,082.
There are currently 334 people with COVID-19 being treated at Ontario hospitals, an increase of 73 since Monday. COVID-19 related admissions to the intensive care unit are down by nine to 314 and there are 202 patients on ventilators.
The number of resolved cases rose by 442 to 530,434. There are currently 3,248 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 16,784 COVID-19 tests were processed. That is up from 13,800 the previous day and brings the province’s positivity rate to 1.6 per cent.
To date, the province has administered 12,869,310 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with more than 3.1 million people having received both shots required to be fully inoculated.
