Jump to: Hospitalizations – Outbreaks – Schools – Vaccinations and Testing – Ontario – Elgin and Oxford – Huron and Perth – Sarnia and Lambton

A confirmed and finalized update to the London and Middlesex coronavirus case count was unavailable Monday due to a scheduled outage to the province’s case and contact management system, the health unit says.

The outage, which lasted from 3 p.m. Sunday until 8:30 a.m., prevented staff at the health unit from entering or extracting local data until the system came back online. Data reported on MLHU’s case dashboard reflects the status of cases at the end of the previous day. Monday’s case update will be reported at noon on Tuesday with that day’s update.

During a media briefing with reporters, Dr. Chris Mackie, the region’s medical officer of health, said that it was believed that roughly 17 cases had been reported along with no deaths, but stressed the final tally was unclear due to the system outage, and that health officials were unsure just how many cases were actually confirmed.

“We are unsure of the case count today. Seventeen may be slightly higher or slightly lower than the actual case count. As the provincial system is fully implemented, we should know more later today or tomorrow to be able to confirm that number,” he said.

As of Sunday, the region had seen at least 5,689 cases in total during the pandemic, with 3,807 recoveries and 175 deaths.

The month of January alone saw 2,306 cases and 69 deaths reported. One death and 76 cases were reported by the health unit over the weekend, along with 24 recoveries.

The health unit says it’s also continuing to transition its dashboard system to the one used by the province, Salesforce, meaning some local datasets, such as school cases and contact tracing figures, may not be available immediately.

School case data, however, is still available from the respective school boards.

The health unit has said previously that the new dashboard system will also allow it to send virtual notifications to those who have tested positive for the virus.

Despite recent case numbers being much lower than the triple-digit jumps the region reported less than a month ago, Mackie warned the respite in confirmed infections was tenuous and was not guaranteed for the longer-term.

“We are walking along a path that is as thin as a razor, and it would be very easy to fall in either direction in a way that would substantially increase our case counts,” he said.

“We’re still at a rate of daily case counts across the province that are higher than the peak of wave one. If we make mistakes now, if we take our attention away from the public health measures and precautions that have gotten us this far, we will see case counts spike again.”

Although the region has gotten past the peak of its second wave, that doesn’t mean a third peak isn’t still possible, he said.

“We’re past the peak, but it’s the middle of winter. So we could easily see the increase in cases again if measures aren’t continued to be followed.”

Concerns continue to mount over the arrival of more contagious coronavirus variants locally and across Ontario — variants which Mackie says heighten the risk that cases may skyrocket if public health measures aren’t adhered to.

“We cannot go back to normal right now. We’re in this for many more weeks, hopefully not many more months. But we cannot let up now.”

Hospitalizations

The number of COVID-19 inpatients hospitalized at London Health Sciences Centre numbered 20 as of Monday, an increase of three from the organization’s last update on Friday.

Critical care and intensive care patients remained unchanged, while active staff cases fell by one to 14, LHSC reported.

LHSC continues to deal with an active outbreak in its emergency department at University Hospital, tied to 10 staff cases. No new staff cases were reported Monday.

St. Joseph’s Health Care London says no COVID-19 patients are in the care of St. Joseph’s Hospital. The organization has five active staff cases, all linked to an outbreak at Mount Hope. An additional update is expected Monday afternoon.

The health unit says 337 people have been hospitalized during the pandemic for COVID-19, including 66 who have required intensive care.

During Monday’s media briefing, Dr. Adam Dukelow, the chief medical officer for LHSC, said that while they have seen relatively steady overall patient occupancy, that hasn’t been the case in other Ontario jurisdictions.

“LHSC is currently working with partners from across the province to ensure capacity is appropriately balanced throughout the system, particularly in critical care, which is facing significant pressure in the Greater Toronto Area,” Dukelow said, noting the organization had prepared for the imminent transfer of up to four critical care patients from the GTA last week, however only one patient had arrived so far.

“We remain at the ready to accept other appropriate cases as directed by the Ontario Critical Care COVID Command Centre. The proactive transfer of COVID-19 patients requiring critical care between hospitals in Ontario is being implemented to ensure access to this enhanced level of care is maintained for all patients in Ontario that need it.”

Locally, Dukelow says local operating room capacity currently stands at 85 per cent for University Hospital and 90 per cent for Victoria Hospital.

Outbreaks

No new outbreaks have been declared and none have been declared resolved.

An outbreak at Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre has grown, officials say.

As of Monday, the outbreak, declared on Jan. 18, has been linked to 42 cases, including 25 among staff and 17 among inmates.

The number of confirmed staff cases at the jail rose by 12 since the health unit’s last update on Friday, while inmate cases declined by two. The reason why was not immediately clear. It may be that some previous cases were later re-evaluated.

“New cases continue to come in. The positive is… well there are two: it’s a relatively young population, so the risk is generally lower; second: certainly on the inmate cases, this is a situation where they’re confined, so the risk spread beyond the facility is mitigated,” Mackie said Monday.

“It is difficult to implement additional precautions in a setting like EMDC, and so we do expect that we will continue to see cases come from that facility, unfortunately.”

Mackie noted that, fortunately, no positive variant cases were found by the provincial lab on samples from the EMDC outbreak.

The most recent institutional outbreak to be reported was at Henley Place LTC Residence on Saturday in the facility’s Victoria Unit.

Two outbreaks were also declared over on Saturday, at Longworth Retirement Residence and at Peoplecare Oak Crossing.

The health unit says 11 institutional outbreaks remained active as of Monday, including 10 at long-term care and retirement homes.

An outbreak is also still active at University Hospital in the facility’s emergency department, linked to 10 cases. No new cases were reported Monday.

Since March, the region has seen at least 94 institutional outbreaks in London and Middlesex, including 68 at local seniors’ facilities.

Schools

No new school cases were reported Monday by the Thames Valley or London District Catholic school boards.

The Thames Valley board says one case is active at Chippewa Public School. No cases were listed as active by the London District Catholic board.

Elementary school students in London and Middlesex are among those in the province returning to the classroom Monday.

High school students will be returning on Thursday.

The return to class is coming with added safety precautions, including a mandate that all students in grades 1 through 12 wear a mask outside when physical distancing can’t be maintained.

Stricter screening protocols are also being implemented, in addition to expanded access to targeted asymptomatic testing.

“What is available, from our understanding, is teams that can provide testing to classes or schools as appropriate,” Mackie said Monday.

“There is not capacity for testing for all students in the system, so we will look for opportunities, whether there are clusters or small outbreaks, whether broader testing might assist in controlling what is happening in the school.”

Few other details have been made public.

Mackie said he would be surprised if the region made it through the week without a case being diagnosed at a local school as a result of symptomatic people being tested.

“Schools uncover those cases because of the policy of testing people that have symptoms. So we will over the next few weeks uncover, no doubt several, maybe more, cases associated with students,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean they’re acquired in school… anything that tests positive this week, for example, almost certainly was acquired prior to the opening of schools.”

Mackie said increased cases of coronavirus variants in the future could change the dynamic around whether schools should be open or not, but says, “at this point, there’s consensus in medical officers of health that, as long as schools are operating as safely as they can, they should be open.”

Mackie has stated previously that a majority of school-linked cases in the London-Middlesex region have been acquired outside of the classroom.

At least 181 school and child-care centre cases have been reported since the pandemic began.

Vaccinations and testing

With all long-term care and high-risk retirement home residents partially inoculated, health officials say the focus in the local campaign now is getting second doses to those individuals.

“Today, we start our first round of second doses in long-term care and retirement homes. We are going back on roughly the same schedule that we did for the first round in those facilities, that means we start with the Oneida Long-Term Care Facility today, exactly three weeks after the first doses were given there,” Mackie said Monday.

“We did have a shipment of Pfizer vaccine arrive today at the (Western Fair District) Agriplex. Very encouraging. And those vaccines are going out to long-term care and retirement homes as we speak.”

While he couldn’t say specifically how much vaccine had arrived — the province has asked local providers to not divulge that information, he says — Mackie said the health unit “will almost certainly” be able to give all long-term care residents their second dose within 21 days, “given the vaccine supplies that are in-house and expected.”

The Agriplex has been closed for more than a week following supply issues involving the Pfizer vaccine. The closure is set to last until at least Friday.

Asked whether the Agriplex would reopen next week, Dr. Adam Dukelow, LHSC’s chief medical officer of health, said that would depend.

“I anticipate the shutdown will likely be extended, but it depends on the amount of supply of vaccine that we receive,” he said.

“We don’t have a line of sight as to how much vaccine we’ll receive next week, which is the key aspect as to when that might be able to open up again.”

Last week, the health unit released a draft vaccination plan for the region, which detailed how officials plan to vaccinate at least 75 per cent of eligible recipients as soon as possible through the use of mass vaccination clinics, mobile units and more.

The plan is to open at least three new mass vaccination clinics by mid-February to complement the one at the Agriplex.

Health officials say the draft plan will see feedback from the ministry before being finalized. Comments and input from the public are also being sought.

The hope, the draft plan states, is to vaccinate as many as 3,000 people per day.

The plan also outlines how the health unit sees primary care settings and pharmacies as playing a crucial role in the third phase of the province’s three-phase rollout.

In recent weeks, the two companies whose vaccines have been approved for use in Canada have complicated matters by saying they wouldn’t immediately be able to deliver their promised number of doses due to production delays in Europe.

The Trudeau government has repeatedly said both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna still intend to fulfil their promised delivery schedules and that current delays are temporary.

At least three other companies, Novavax, Astra-Zeneca and Johnson and Johnson, have all launched the process of having Health Canada approve their vaccines.

Both of the city’s COVID-19 assessment centres, which are still operating on an appointment model, continue to see steady, albeit lower turnout compared to early on in January.

Carling Heights reported an average of 289 visits per day between Jan. 25 and 29, while Oakridge Arena reported an average of 264.

Between Jan. 11 and 15, Carling Heights reported an average of 462, while Oakridge saw 331.

Officials with the Thames Valley Family Health Team have attributed the slump to several factors, including the province’s stay-at-home order and the ceasing of testing for travel.

Ontario

Ontario is reporting its first case of a new COVID-19 variant that emerged in South Africa late last year.

The province’s chief medical officer says the case was found in Peel Region and the local public health unit is investigating.

Dr. David Williams says the person does not have a known history of travel or any known contact with someone who has travelled.

Williams says data from South Africa shows the variant has a higher viral load, meaning it may be more infectious.

It’s one of three “variants of concern” that Public Health Ontario is ramping up screening for in the province.

Ontario has already recorded dozens of cases of the U.K. variant of COVID-19.

The province reported 1,969 new cases of COVID-19 Monday and 36 more deaths linked to the virus.

Health Minister Christine Elliott says that there are 886 new cases in Toronto, 330 in Peel Region and 128 in York Region.

A spokeswoman for Ontario’s Ministry of Health says that as Toronto migrates to the provincial data system, additional records were reported for the local public health unit, resulting in an overestimate of Monday’s daily counts.

Ontario is reporting that nearly 30,400 tests were completed since the last daily update.

The province says 2,256 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were administered since Sunday’s report.

A total of 341,900 vaccine doses have been administered in Ontario.

There have been 270,180 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in Ontario since the pandemic began. Of those, 244,939 have been resolved and 6,224 have resulted in someone’s death.

International travellers began taking a COVID-19 test upon arrival in Ontario starting Monday in a bid to stop contagious new variants of the virus from further infiltrating the province.

The provincial government announced the plan on Friday, the same day the federal government announced a similar program that’s to take effect in the coming weeks.

The province’s testing order comes into effect Monday at Toronto’s Pearson International airport and will also eventually apply to the province’s land border crossings to the United States.

Elgin and Oxford

Ten people have tested positive for the coronavirus and another three have recovered, Southwestern Public Health reported on Monday.

The region’s pandemic case tally now stands at 2,305, of which 2,082 people have recovered. Fifty-seven deaths have been reported, most recently on Saturday.

There are at least 166 active cases in the region, the health unit says. At least 58 are located in Woodstock, while 23 are in St. Thomas, 21 in Norwich, 17 in Tillsonburg and 13 in East Zorra-Tavistock.

Monday’s update, which reflects data from the day before, brings the number of cases reported during the month of January to 914, along with 41 deaths.

Two men are facing charges after police say Aylmer’s Church of God held an in-person service again this weekend, in violation of provincial pandemic rules.

Police say the men, aged 57 and 26, are charged with hosting an event exceeding the number of people permitted. While their names have not been released, the 57-year-old is believed to be the church’s controversial pastor Henry Hildebrandt.

Investigators say a charge has also been laid against the church corporation and add that other evidence is being reviewed that could lead to additional charges.

Last week, police said they had identified 47 people alleged to have breached emergency orders during an indoor and outdoor gathering at the same church on Jan. 24.

No new institutional outbreaks have been declared and none have been listed as resolved compared to the day before.

Nine remain active at long-term care and retirement homes, as declared on:

• Jan. 28 at Extendicare in Port Stanley (one staff case)
• Jan. 24 at Arches Transitional Bed Program in Woodstock (one staff case)
• Jan. 21 at Caressant Care Retirement Home in Woodstock (38 resident, nine staff cases; three resident cases more than the day before)
• Jan. 21 at Elgin Manor in St. Thomas (one staff case)
• Jan. 15 at Dayspring Residence in Tillsonburg (one resident case)
• Jan. 1 at Woodingford Lodge – Woodstock (two resident, two staff cases)
• Dec. 19 at Terrace Lodge in Aylmer (six staff cases)
• Dec. 16 at PeopleCare Tavistock (47 resident, 36 staff cases; nine deaths)
• Dec. 12 at Maple Manor Nursing Home (85 resident, 52 staff cases; 20 deaths)

Health unit figures show that at least 32 outbreaks at 21 facilities have been reported during the pandemic.

Neither the Thames Valley District School Board nor the London District Catholic School Board reported new cases. Neither had active cases in the region. Elgin-Oxford remains in remote learning.

The health unit says a total of 415 cases have been reported in Woodstock during the pandemic, while 296 have been in St. Thomas, 357 in Aylmer and 320 in Tillsonburg.

Elsewhere, 196 cases have been in Norwich, 161 in Bayham, 101 in East Zorra-Tavistock, 98 in Ingersoll, 53 in Zorra, 47 in Blandford-Blenheim, 46 in South-West Oxford, 43 in Central Elgin, 24 in Southwold, 21 in West Elgin, 18 in Dutton/Dunwich and eight in Malahide.

The region’s test positivity rate stood at 2.4 per cent the week of Jan. 17, down from 3.2 the week before and 5.9 the week before that.

Updated figures are expected on Wednesday.

Huron and Perth

One person has died and 19 others have tested positive for the coronavirus, Huron Perth Public Health reported on Monday.

The update brings the region’s pandemic case tally to 1,227, of which 1,108 people have recovered, an increase of 13 from the previous update.

At least 40 people have died. Details on the most recent reported death were not immediately available.

According to the health unit, 10 of Monday’s reported cases are from Huron East, while three are from Stratford, and one each from Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh, Central Huron, Howick, Morris Turnberry, Perth East and South Huron.

At least 79 cases are currently active, with roughly half, 48, located in Huron East. Elsewhere, 12 cases are active in North Perth. Ten other municipalities have active case tallies of three or fewer.

At least four people are currently in hospital in the region.

One new outbreak has been reported. The outbreak, declared on Saturday, was reported at Fordwich Village in Howick and is linked to one staff case.

It’s among four active outbreaks in the region, declared on:

• Jan. 30 at Fordwich Village in Howick (one staff case)
• Jan. 17 at Seaforth Manor in Huron East (41 resident, 13 staff cases; four resident and five staff cases more than the previous update)
• Jan. 10 at Caressant Care Nursing Home in North Perth (43 resident, 27 staff cases; 12 deaths; one staff case more than the previous update)
• Jan. 7 at Caressant Care Retirement Home in North Perth (30 resident, 10 staff cases; one death; one staff case more than the day before)

Meantime, no new school cases have been reported, however three have been reported recovered. The region remains in remote learning.

One case was located at Stratford District Secondary School, while two were at Stratford Intermediate School.

Four cases remain active, all under the Avon-Maitland District School Board. No cases were listed as active by the Huron-Perth Catholic District School Board.

One active case is located at Listowel District Secondary School, while three are at North Perth Westfield Elementary School.

At least 519 cases have been reported in Perth County during the pandemic, including 332 in North Perth 132 in Perth East, 29 in Perth South and 26 in West Perth.

Elsewhere, 393 cases have been reported in Huron County, including 90 in South Huron, 80 in Huron East, 47 in Central Huron, 40 in Morris Turnberry, 38 in North Huron, 34 in Howick, 32 in Bluewater, 21 in ACW and 11 in Goderich.

In Stratford, 287 cases have been reported, while in St. Marys, 28 have been reported.

According to the health unit, the region’s test positivity rate rose slightly the week of Jan. 17, up to 3.2 per cent from 3.1 the week prior. At least 3,635 people were tested that week.

Updated figures are expected Wednesday.

Sarnia and Lambton

One person has died and nine others have tested positive for the coronavirus in Lambton County.

Monday’s update brings the region’s pandemic case tally to 1,842, of which 1,718 people have recovered, an increase of nine from the day before.

Thirty-eight people have also died during the pandemic. Information on the most recent death was not immediately available.

At least 86 cases are listed as being active in Lambton. Seven people were listed as being in hospital due to COVID-19, Bluewater Health reported.

With Monday’s reported cases, it brings the total number of infections confirmed in January to 985, more cases than seen through all of 2020 — 847.

One outbreak was declared resolved over the weekend at Landmark Village. The outbreak, linked to two staff cases, was declared on Jan. 11. Word of its resolve was first reported by the health unit on Monday.

Elsewhere, seven outbreaks remain active, including four at seniors’ facilities, two at workplaces and one at Bluewater Health hospital.

• Jan. 28 at Lambton Meadowview Villa in Petrolia (one staff case)
• Jan. 13 at Vision Rest Home (32 resident, 14 staff cases, two deaths)
• Jan. 8 at Twin Lakes Terrace (LTC) in Sarnia (18 resident, five staff cases, one death; one resident case more than the previous update)
• Dec. 30 at Village on the St. Clair in Sarnia (28 resident, 14 staff cases, three deaths; one resident case more than the previous update).

The outbreak at Bluewater Health, meantime, is linked to four patient and six staff cases, one more patient case than the previous update.

Two workplace outbreaks are active, declared Jan. 20 and Jan. 29. They’re linked to at least eight cases. One workplace outbreak, declared Jan. 16 and linked to eight cases, was declared over on Sunday.

It’s not clear if any school cases have been reported.

The health unit does not report school cases, and the Lambton Kent District and St. Clair Catholic District school boards have paused public reporting while students are in remote learning. The region remains in remote learning.

The county’s test positivity rate fell to 2.3 per cent as of the week of Jan. 17 to 23, down from 4.5 the week before and 6.2 the week before that. Updated figures are expected Wednesday.

— With files from The Canadian Press