Southwestern reports 28 new cases over weekend

Southwestern Public Health reported on Monday, March 22, that 28 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Elgin, St. Thomas and Middlesex over the weekend.

The total number of ongoing infections being tracked by the health unit stands at 75, up from 66 on Friday.

(Southwestern, which used to provide daily updates, has stopped doing so on weekends, citing the shift of manpower to mass vaccination clinics in recent weeks. Weekend numbers are now being released on Mondays.)

The number of ongoing cases in Central Elgin rose to 10 on Monday from seven Friday and in St. Thomas and area to nine from four. One new case appeared in Bayham.

Aylmer and area dropped to two from 10.

In Oxford, Woodstock and area increased to 38 from 36, Ingersoll to eight from three, Tillsonburg and area to four from three and a new case appeared in Norwich.

East Zorra-Tavistock decreased to one from two, while Blandford-Blenheim remained at one.

Southwestern also reported that to date, 41 cases involving “variants of concern” had been identified in its region.

Of those, five had been analyzed and shown to be of the United Kingdom variant.

Seventeen more cases had been resolved, but detailed laboratory results indicating which variants were involved had not yet been completed, and 19 cases were ongoing.

The infection rate across the Southwestern region stands at 35.5 cases per 100,000 of population, up from 32.2 on Friday.

Across Ontario, 1,699 new cases were confirmed Monday, 1,791 on Sunday and 1,829 on Saturday.