News Headlines

Thames Valley District School Board has announced the discovery of two cases of COVID-19 at New Sarum Public School. The board said the school would remain open despite the cases. All parents and staff members were immediately notified of the cases, TVDSB stated. Staff and pupils found to have been in close contact to the…

Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced Thursday afternoon, April 1, that a four-week “emergency brake shutdown” was being imposed on the province in an effort to check the spread of COVID-19 variants that are more dangerous than the original strain. Food stores and pharmacies can stay open at a 50 percent capacity for customers, and other…

Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce, in a social media post on Thursday morning, April 1, announced that schools in the province would remain open. Schools were “critical for students’ mental health and learning,” he said, adding Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health David Williams had stated schools remained safe, despite a third wave of COVID-19…

Southwestern Public Health reported 12 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Elgin, St. Thomas and Oxford on Tuesday, March 30. The health unit was tracking 84 ongoing cases on Tuesday, down from 92 on Monday. Elgin, St. Thomas and Oxford remain in the “Orange-Restrict” provincial pandemic colour code on Tuesday, but on that same day…

Southwestern Public Health reported its 69th death linked to COVID-19 on Monday, March 29, involving an Oxford woman in her 70s. The health unit recorded 56 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 over the weekend, bringing the total number of ongoing cases at the moment to 92, up from 76 on Friday. St. Thomas and area…

Sherri Spanjers of Tillsonburg, left, a worker in a dental clinic, received her first dose of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine from Elgin-Middlesex-London MPP and Ontario Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks Jeff Yurek during a Southwestern Public Health mass vaccination clinic at Memorial Arena in St. Thomas on Saturday morning, March 27. This was the…

Southwestern Public Health reported on Friday, March 26, the death of an Oxford man in his 60s which was linked to COVID-19. That brings to 68 the total number of such deaths in Elgin, St. Thomas and Oxford. The health unit also reported 10 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Friday, up from eight on…

The fact that no long-term care or retirement homes are currently experiencing a COVID-19 outbreak is “a good indication of the power of vaccination,” Dr. Joyce Lock, medical officer of health for Southwestern Public Health, said during a weekly news briefing on Wednesday, March 24. She started by reporting the health unit had confirmed seven…

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…

Southwestern Public Health has so far identified 26 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Elgin, St. Thomas and Oxford involving a variant of the virus. Dr. Joyce Lock told a news briefing Wednesday, March 17, that all positive samples for COVID-19 were now receiving an additional laboratory test to identify the presence of one of two…