Ottawa Public Health is reporting an increase of 80 COVID-19 cases on Thursday, pushing key coronavirus indicators in the city closer to the threshold of Ontario’s red zone.
There have now been 14,950 cases of COVID-19 locally since the start of the pandemic, with 517 of those cases currently considered active.
One additional person has died in connection with COVID-19 in Ottawa, raising the city’s death toll of the pandemic to 442 as of Thursday.
The seven-day average of new coronavirus infections in Ottawa now stands at 58.3, up from 52.7 at the start of the week.
Ottawa’s incidence rate of COVID-19 is now at 38.7 cases per 100,000 residents. Among the indicators that can tip Ottawa from the current orange status of Ontario’s colour-coded reopening framework into the red zone is a rate of 40 cases per 100,000.
Provincial officials make announcements about which regions will move to new sections of the framework on Friday afternoons.
Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, expressed concern about the rising viral levels and hospitalizations in the city at a press conference on Wednesday.
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There, she said there could be as many as 83 COVID-19 variant cases of concern in the city, with 73 of those possible cases awaiting genetic sequencing for confirmation.
Public Health Ontario’s latest epidemiological report shows Ottawa has a second confirmed case of the B.1.351 strain of the coronavirus, which was first identified in South Africa. The provincial health unit has previously confirmed eight cases of B.1.1.7, the variant first detected in the United Kingdom.
There are currently 34 ongoing coronavirus outbreaks in Ottawa, including new outbreaks affecting the Maycourt Hospice and Chartwell’s Duke of Devonshire retirement home.
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