WINDSOR, ONT. -- The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is reporting new COVID-19 cases and no additional deaths in the region on Friday.
Windsor-Essex has had a total of 13,534 confirmed cases of the virus, including 12,854 people who have recovered.
Here’s the breakdown of new cases:
- 3 cases are outbreak related
- 6 cases are close contacts of confirmed cases
- 2 case is community acquired
- 18 cases are still under investigation
WECHU says 279 cases are considered active. There are 41 local Variant of Concern (VOC) cases have been identified in Windsor-Essex, two are the B.1.1.7 variant first reported in the United Kingdom while the others are unknown.
There are 21 people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the hospital including four people in the ICU.
The death toll related to COVID-19 has reached 401 people.
There are 11 outbreaks in the region, including five at workplaces, four community outbreaks, and two in long-term care and retirement homes.
WECHU’s manager of epidemiology and evaluation Ramsey D'Souza presented Friday’s weekly epidemiological summary for the region.
D’Souza said local numbers have plateaued but still remain high at approximately 30 cases per day.
“Our rates are on the lower end this week compared to Ontario as the province enters their third wave. In comparison to the southwest our rates are still higher however,” he said.
D'Souza presented a summary of monitoring indicators:
- Most recent completed weekly case rate: 50.1 cases/100,000 population
- Per cent positivity week: 2.8 per cent (full week)
- Most recent seven days available: 46.5/100,000 population
- Most recent seven days: 2.7 per cent
- Ro (effective): 0.9
D’Souza said the region is seeing lower levels of hospitalizations and outbreaks. While the number of deaths in the region have decreased, the case count has not flattened as quickly as the health unit would have liked.
The summary shows Windsor-Essex has the third highest cumulative COVID-19 case rate in Ontario.
