New cases total 195, health unit investigates exposures
Windsor-essex has once again recorded a new all-time-high single-day increase in COVID-19 infections.
The local health unit on Monday reported 195 new confirmed cases of the virus, eclipsing the previous local record of 127 cases set last Wednesday.
The case count is so significant that, for the first time in 10 months, Windsor-essex County Health Unit CEO Theresa Marentette did not provide a breakdown of where the infections came from, instead stating the transmission sources for all 195 cases are still under investigation by WECHU staff. Officials did reveal that some of the cases are farm workers in the county, and others are associated with outbreaks at long-term care homes.
“We have worked really hard to get the message out about the cases, about the potential impacts, and about the restrictions,” he said, adding the lockdown announcement on Friday shouldn't have come as a surprise — the local COVID-19 data had warranted a lockdown for more than a week prior.
Although shoppers appeared to be following public health guidelines, “the number of people coming together in large numbers increases the risk significantly,” he said.
No additional COVID deaths were reported on Monday, though the health unit reported four deaths over the weekend. They were a woman in her 90s, two men in their 80s, and a man in his 80s — and all of them from the community.
Since March, 4,763 local residents have tested positive for COVID-19. Of those, 779 cases are active and being monitored by public health unit staff and 91 people have died. The remaining 3,893 cases are considered resolved.
In the second wave, which began around Nov. 1 when case counts started to climb, 1,921 people have tested positive. In other words, roughly 40 per cent of the region's confirmed infections occurred in the past 44 days.
With a local COVID-19 death rate of about 2.2 per cent, Ahmed again emphasized that the region can expect more people to die — about 22 of every 1,000 people infected — as a result of the disease.
In the last three weeks alone, 12 people in Windsor-essex have died from complications brought on by COVID-19.
“As a community, are we OK to say, `it's OK, let people die, we'll just do what we need to do because we're doing it safely.' No, you're not,” Ahmed said. If residents were “doing things safely, we wouldn't have this number of cases.”
“It's a false sense of security that some people are putting forward.”
Over the weekend, the WECHU reported 115 new cases.
As of Monday afternoon, 42 people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 were in local hospitals, with 11 of them in intensive care. An additional 60 people with suspected cases of COVID-19 who have not yet received test results are in hospital.
There are 21 locations in Windsor and Essex County with active outbreaks of COVID-19.
Seven are long-term care and retirement homes: Extendicare Tecumseh, Chartwell St. Clair Beach, and Village of Aspen Lake in Tecumseh, Berkshire Care Centre, The Village at St. Clair, and Devonshire Retirement Residence in Windsor, and Country Village in Woodslee.
As a community, are we OK to say, `it's OK, let people die, we'll just do what we need to do because we're doing it safely.' No, you're not.
The health unit continues to monitor community outbreaks at Manor Lodge House and Victoria Manor.
Nine of the outbreaks are at workplaces: four farms — two in Kingsville and two in Leamington — and one is a health care and social assistance business in Lakeshore. Three are manufacturing facilities in Windsor, Kingsville, and Tecumseh, and one is a finance and insurance business in Leamington.
Hotel-dieu Grace Healthcare continues to manage an outbreak at its Prince Road facility, where 18 patients and 36 health-care workers have tested positive as of Monday afternoon.
Outbreaks are also active at General Brock Public School and Corpus Christi Catholic Middle School's Central Park Athletics Campus.
Ontario logged 1,940 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday, as well as 23 more deaths.