Some ups, some downs in local COVID-19 cases

Southwestern Public Health was reporting 17 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, March 23, bringing the total number of ongoing cases in Elgin, St. Thomas and Oxford to 78, up from 75 on Monday.

St. Thomas and area rose to 13 ongoing cases Tuesday from nine on Monday,  while Central Elgin decreased to nine from 10 and one new case was reported in Dutton Dunwich.

Aylmer and area stayed at two and Bayham at one.

In Oxford, Woodstock and area dropped to 33 from 38. Ingersoll and area increased to nine from eight, Tillsonburg and area to five from four and East Zorra-Tavistock to three from one, while a new case appeared in South-West Oxford. Norwich remained at one.

In recent weeks, laboratory testing has identified 47 cases involving “variants of concern,” considered more contagious or resulting in more serious symptoms than the original COVID-19 virus.

Determining which variant is involved can take up to two more weeks of laboratory analysis.

As of Tuesday, five of the cases had been positively identified as being what’s commonly referred to as the United Kingdom (UK) variant. All five of those have since been resolved.

A further 42 variant cases are split evenly between 21 which are ongoing and 21 considered resolved. All those cases are at this point presumed to be of the UK variant.

The infection rate for the Southwestern region stood at 36.9 cases per 100,000 of population on Tuesday, up from 35.5 on Monday.

Across Ontario, 1,546 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed on Tuesday, down from 1,699 on Monday.