Ottawa adds 106 COVID-19 cases, 2 deaths

Ottawa Public Health is reporting 106 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday with active cases of the virus continuing to trend downward.

Two more people have also died in connection with COVID-19 locally, raising the death toll of the pandemic in Ottawa to 519.

Active COVID-19 cases in the city dropped to 1,620 in the past day, down from 1,722 as of Wednesday.

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No new cases of the B.1.617 variant first identified in India were detected locally in the past 24 hours. OPH confirmed Wednesday that three recent travellers had screened positive for the variant after returning, but Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, said close contacts of the individuals had tested negative.

Ottawa is set to surpass 25,000 total COVID-19 cases on Friday, sitting just two cases shy of that mark on Thursday.

There are now 95 Ottawa residents in hospital with COVID-19, 26 of whom are in the intensive care unit. While those figures do not include patients transferred to local hospitals from out of the city, OPH’s COVID-19 dashboard shows 92 per cent of acute care beds and 67 per cent of ICU beds are currently occupied across the city’s health-care system.

There are 39 ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks in Ottawa, 22 of which are in group home or health-care sites, 10 of which affect schools or child-care facilities and the rest tied to community settings.

Ottawa workplaces account for six of these outbreaks, with two in warehouses and one each in a retail, service, restaurant and manufacturing setting.