Health unit reports six new COVID-19 cases in Windsor-Essex

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit in Windsor, Ont., on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2020. (Chris Campbell / CTV Windsor)

Windsor, Ont. -

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is reporting six new cases of COVID-19 in the region on Friday.

Windsor-Essex has had a total of 16,838 COVID-19 cases including 16,377 residents who have recovered.

Breakdown of the new cases:

• One case is travel-related
• One case is community acquired
• One case is a close contact of a confirmed case
• Three cases are still being investigated

WECHU says 26 cases are considered active. Of the active cases, 12 are variants of concern and 14 are non-variants.

"With the active case counts at 26 cases which is really good for our community, we hope that this is the actual number of cases," medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Ahmed said. "But again some of the precautions that we still have to take to make sure that all of the efforts aren’t for nothing and we can continue to build up on what we have achieved and accomplished so far."

Dr. Ahmed provided the weekly epidemiology summary on Friday detailing trends in the region over the last week.

“This is probably one of the lowest week over week case rates that we have seen throughout this pandemic," he said. "So we are in a very good position with respect to our case rates and a lot of the effort that has been done with vaccination."

Weekly summary of monitoring indicators for Windsor-Essex:

• Most recent completed weekly case rate is 5.1 cases/100,000 population
• Most recent 7-day rate = 4.2 cases/100,000 population
• Percent positivity – 1.3 per cent (full week)
• Most recent 7-days per cent positivity = 1.5 per cent
• R0 (effective) =0.79

There are four Windsor-Essex residents with COVID-19 in the hospital, including two people in the ICU.

The local death toll related to the virus remains at 435.

The WECHU is currently monitoring two outbreaks, one at a workplace and one community outbreak.

As of Friday, 75.1 per cent of Windsor-Essex residents have received their first vaccine, while 55.6 per cent have received their second dose.

Dr. Ahmed says the region is in a good spot for vaccine coverage, but he would like to see the rate increase across all age groups amounting to 90 per cent coverage to “feel more comfortable.”

“I’m really hoping that with the emergence of many different variants that we are seeing in the world, our vaccination rates should be one of the highest in the province for our region to survive the effects of lockdown and not having to lockdown or not have to go through the same challenges that we have gone throughout the pandemic.”

Windsor-Essex County Residents Vaccinated:

• 277,311 WEC residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine
• 80,093 WEC residents have received only 1 dose of a vaccine
• 197,218 WEC residents have received both doses of a vaccine
• A total of 474,529 doses have been administered to WEC residents