WINDSOR, ONT. -- The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is reporting one additional death and 35 new COVID-19 cases on Monday.

The latest death is a woman in her 90s from a retirement home. The local death toll related to COVID-19 has reached 256 people.

Windsor-Essex has had a total of 11,057 confirmed cases, including 8,128 people who have recovered.

This is the lowest number of new cases reported by WECHU since Nov. 21, when there were 30 cases.

“I’m still cautiously optimistic in these numbers,” says medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Ahmed.

COVID-19 cases by date

Ahmed noted the fluctuation in case counts and says there is no known data reporting issue.

“At this point, I do not have any official notification from the labs about any planned delays in reporting but it is possible that, due to the high volume, test results are prioritized in a different way leading to day-to-day fluctuations in our daily case counts,” says Ahmed.

There were 357 new cases reported over the weekend – 87 on Saturday and 270 on Sunday. The health unit also announced seven additional deaths on Saturday.

Here’s the breakdown of new cases:

  • 2 cases are outbreak related
  • 4 cases are close contacts of confirmed cases
  • 29 cases are still being investigated

WECHU says 2,673 cases are considered active. There are 119 people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the hospital and 18 people are in the ICU

There are 48 local outbreaks - 21 outbreaks at long-term care or retirement homes, 23 workplace outbreaks, three hospital outbreaks and one community outbreak.