Sudbury's health unit is reporting 29 new cases of COVID-19 for March 26. Public Health also said there are now 325 active cases being monitored. This is the highest ever number of local active cases.
Also, since the health unit began tracking COVID-19 cases just over one year ago, there have been 1,332 total COVID-19 cases confirmed locally.
PHSD also said 1,007 of those cases have been resolved.
Also, PHSD reported Thursday evening that another local person has died from COVID-19, but no details were revealed. That is the 16th death associated with the pandemic in the region.
With respect to where the new cases might have occurred, the Public Health Sudbury and Districts (PHSD) daily update page reported that 26 cases were found to have occurred within the Greater Sudbury Area. One additional case was reported to have occurred in the wider Sudbury district and two cases are reported from the Manitoulin district.
With respect to possible causes of the new cases, PHSD reported 46 new cases as close contact of a confirmed case. Eleven new cases were associated with an outbreak, 12 new cases had no known epidemiological link and there is a decrease of 40 cases that were listed as under investigation.
PHSD also reports general demographics each day about the people who are becoming infected.
This shows that the majority of cases are persons in the 20 to 39 age category with 452 total cases (no increase reported).
The next highest group number was 312 cases for the 40 to 59 age group (no increase reported).
Next highest number was 300 cases for the 19 and under age group (no increase reported).
Seniors in the 60 to 79 age group had only 164 cases total (no increase reported), and people aged 80 and over were the lowest category with 71 cases (no increase reported).
The numbers above may not completely correspond with the daily case count because PHSD does not always report changes on the day they occur.
Variants of concern
PHSD is also reporting there are still five cases of "confirmed" variants of the COVID-19 virus, no increase there.
There are, however, 348 cases that are "screened positive" for variants of concern, an increase of 25 over the number reported for Tuesday.
PHSD said additional time is required to genetically-sequence the virus in a positive sample and confirm it as a COVID-19 variant of concern.
At Sudbury's Health Sciences North, the number of COVID-19 cases has increased by one. As reported by HSN at noon today, Friday March 26, there were 22 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the hospital. According to the HSN website, this included 11 COVID patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
There are 10 additional admitted patients currently being "investigated" for COVID-19, and awaiting test results. One of those patients is in the ICU at this time.
The hospital is also coping with one COVID-19 outbreak on the seventh floor, North Tower. Two previous outbreaks that occurred in the South Tower are declared over.
On the provincial COVID-19 register today, the Ontario government daily website reported there were 2169 new confirmed COVID-19 cases across the province. Also today, the province reported 12 new deaths had occurred in the previous 24 hours.
