WINDSOR, ONT. -- The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is reporting 11 more deaths and 288 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday.
This is a record-breaking number of new cases reported in a single day. The previous high was 272 on Dec. 31.
Medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Ahmed says the health unit was catching up on data and not all of the new cases were necessarily from Tuesday night.
“My epidemiologist reported to me that some of these data that we are reporting today were misreported before by the lab, so we are just trying to collate it together so it is captured into our data,” says Ahmed.
Nine of the people who died were residents of long-term care and retirement homes - a man in his 60s, four women and a man in their 80s, two women and a man in their 90s. Two were from the community -a woman in her 50s and a man in his 70s.
“The number of deaths is staggering and honestly I feel really sad every day when I’m seeing the large number of deaths that we are reporting every day,” says Ahmed.
The local death toll related to COVID-19 has reached 237 people.
Windsor-Essex has had a total of 10,278 confirmed cases, including 7,229 people who have recovered.
WECHU says 2,812 cases are considered active.
Ahmed says he still has concerns with people not complying with the COVID-19 safety measures and some people are still gathering too much.
“I’m hopeful with the extended measures that has been put down with a hard lockdown now, by the province and by the premier, it should help people stay home and stay safe, would help us bring the case counts down and to save our healthcare system,” says Ahmed.
There are 45 outbreaks in the region, including 21 at LTC and retirement homes, 19 at workplaces, two community outbreaks, two outbreaks at Windsor Regional Hospital and one school outbreak.
