Southwestern sees slight drop in cases

Southwestern Public Health announced that 31 new cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed on Saturday, Dec. 19, but the overall number of cases being tracked in Elgin, St. Thomas and Oxford dropped to 156 from 160.

Southwestern remains in the “Orange-Restrict” colour code for pandemic restrictions.

Aylmer and area’s number of cases dropped to 24 from 27 the previous day, St. Thomas and area’s to 24 from 27, and Bayham’s to eight from 16.

Central Elgin remained steady at three cases and Southwold at one.

In Oxford, Norwich rose to 28 cases from 24, Tillsonburg and area to 20 from 18, Blandford-Blenheim to 12 from 10 and East-Zorra Tavistock to seven from six. Three new cases appeared in Zorra.

Ingersoll and area dropped to nine cases from 10.

The infection rate for the Southwestern region dropped to 73.8 per 100,000 of population from 75.7.

Across Ontario, 2,357 new cases were confirmed on Saturday, up from 2,290 the previous day.