LONDON, ONT -- The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) is reporting 31 new COVID-19 cases and no additional deaths in the region on Sunday.

Windsor-Essex has had a total of 13,595 confirmed cases of the virus, including 12,901 people who have recovered.

Here’s the breakdown of new cases:

two case are outbreak related

18 cases are close contacts of confirmed cases

three cases are community acquired

seven cases are still under investigation

one case is travel related outside of North America

WECHU says 293 cases are considered active.

45 local Variant of Concern (VOC) cases have been identified in Windsor-Essex.

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 sits at 401 people.

There are 13 outbreaks in the region, including seven at workplaces, five community outbreaks, and one 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.