WINDSOR, ONT. -- The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit has reported 93 new cases of COVID-19 and no additional deaths in the region on Thursday.

Windsor-Essex has had a total of 14,602 confirmed cases of the virus, including 13,741 people who have recovered.

Here’s the breakdown of new cases:

  • 36 cases are close contacts of confirmed cases
  • 28 cases are community acquired
  • 1 is outbreak related to Michigan
  • 1 is travel related
  • 27 cases are still under investigation.

The death toll related to COVID-19 remains at 409 people.

With the sudden spike in new cases, medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Ahmed says it's too soon to tell whether this is a trend or an anomaly.

“We have seen there was a day when we reported close to 70 cases and then we went back to 30 to 40 cases which was our average for some time. It should be lower, but we are still there,” he says.

Ahmed says while possible the region is seeing a late trend, he hopes it is not and Windsor-Essex can get back to the regular, or even fewer number of cases we have been seeing recently.

“We need everyone to make sure that this is a very critical time, especially when variants are circulating, when there’s a lot of active cases in our community as well as other communities,” he says. “Every community is seeing a surge and in Windsor-Essex we have been lucky so far. We really should make a good use of this opportunity to keep our case counts down.”

The health unit says there have been 366 preliminary or confirmed Variant of Concern (VOC) cases identified in the region.

WECHU says there are 452 cases currently considered active, 129 are VOC. There are 19 people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the hospital including four people in the ICU.

There are nine active outbreaks in the region, including six at workplaces and three school outbreaks at St. Peter Catholic Elementary School, St. John Vianney Catholic Elementary School and Centennial Central Public School.

Here's the number of Windsor-Essex residents who are vaccinated:

  • 112,044 WEC residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine
  • 99,494 WEC residents have received only 1 dose of a vaccine
  • 12,550 WEC residents have received both doses of a vaccine
  • A total of 124,594 doses have been administered to WEC residents