After two days of daily COVID-19 case counts in the teens, new infections in the London region have shot back above 30.
The Middlesex London Health Unit reported 38 new COVID-19 cases and one death on Wednesday. That is an increase from the 17 cases that were recorded each day Monday and Tuesday. The latest infections bring the total number of local cases to 5,760.
The health unit said a man in his 80s who lived in a long-term care home was the latest person to succumb to the virus. His death is the first related to COVID-19 this month and brings the area death toll to 176.
Recoveries are up to 3,831, leaving 1,753 known active cases in the region.
Outbreaks at Country Terrace, Mount Hope Centre for Long-Term Care, and Oneida Long-Term Care have been declared resolved. That leaves six local long-term care and retirement facilities dealing with outbreaks.
The outbreak in the adult emergency department at University Hospital continues, but there have been no new infections connected with it. To date, ten staff and no patients have contracted COVID-19 due to the outbreak. The London Health Sciences Centre currently has 17 inpatients with COVID-19, nine in the intensive care unit.
A new case of COVID-19 was identified at Kensal Park French Immersion public school late Tuesday. The case is the second to be reported within the Thames Valley District school board since elementary students returned to in-person learning on Monday. The previous case was at Central public school in Woodstock. The health unit has also reclassified an infection that was reported on January 22 as a school case linked to Montcalm Secondary school.
"It is important that staff, students, parents, guardians and the community, have accurate information about COVID cases,” Dr. Chris Mackie, the region's medical officer of health, said in a statement. “With the acknowledgement that this was, in fact, a school-related case, it is important to report it publicly and take the necessary steps to look closely at our procedures to ensure cases continue to be reported appropriately. I apologize on behalf of the health unit for the initial misclassification of this case as not school-related.”
The health unit announced on Wednesday that the vaccination clinic at the Western Fair District Agriplex will resume inoculating health care workers next week. The clinic was forced to temporarily halt all vaccinations on January 22 due to a delay in the delivery of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine across Canada.
Southwestern Public Health, the health unit for Elgin and Oxford, recorded seven new COVID-19 cases and two additional deaths. The latest infections bring the area’s total caseload to 2,325. The death toll is now 59. Recoveries rose to 2,124. Eight local long-term care homes are battling outbreaks. There are a total 142 active cases in the region.
Provincially, the number of new COVID-19 cases rose back above 1,000.
There were 1,172 infections logged across the province Wednesday, up 745 from the previous day. Public health officials had cautioned that Tuesday's triple-digit figure was due to an “underestimation” as Toronto Public Health moved to the province’s data tracking system.
Toronto had the highest number of new infections of any city in the province with 444. Peel recorded 199, and York Region had 110.
Ontario’s total case count since the start of the pandemic now sits at 272,097.
Sixty-seven deaths were reported over the past 24 hours, 29 of which were in long-term care homes. The province’s death toll is now 6,305.
At hospitals in Ontario, there are 1,066 patients with COVID-19. Of those, 336 are in intensive care and 254 are on ventilators.
The number of resolved cases rose to 248,981. There are currently 16,811 active cases of the virus in Ontario.
In the last 24 hour period, 52,418 COVID-19 tests were processed. Ontario's current positivity rate is 3.3 per cent.
As of 8 p.m. Tuesday, 348,331 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Ontario.
