Sudbury is backsliding.
When it comes to COVID-19 case numbers, Sudbury has been sliding backward for the past week or so.
Just in the past four days, Public Health Sudbury and Districts reported 20 new cases of COVID-19. This included the fact that for three days in a row -- Wednesday, Thursday and Friday -- there were six cases each day.
This is a change from the beginning of the month, which started off slow and easy.
Tuesday June 1 reported two cases, followed by five cases on June 2, followed by three cases, zero cases on June 4, two more on June 5, then three, then two. Altogether, 17 cases in the first week. The second week of June saw only 12 new cases including a zero case count on June 13.
Things turned around in the third week of June which reported 25 new cases.
There was a similar trend with the number of "active" cases as reported by Public Health Sudbury. At the beginning of the month there were 27 active cases of COVID-19 in the local health unit area. It rose up to 33 a few days later, but then began to decline, going as low as 18 cases on June 14.
Things changed, again in the third week of June and the active cases began to rise, just as the daily case count was rising.
In the past four days, the number of active cases have gone to 30, then 35, then 37 on Thursday and then to 40 active cases by Friday afternoon.
So who is getting sick? Again, the numbers tell a story. Since the beginning of the month, the biggest case count increase has been for people in the age 19 and under category. They have had 31 new cases locally since June 1.
The next highest group was the age 20 to 39 age category, which had 27 new cases reported locally.
The age 40 to 59 age group was the next highest with 10 new cases in the past month.
The 60 to 79 age group suffered only seven new cases so far this month. **
There was no case count increase for area residents aged 80 and older.
Also, by the numbers, Sudbury district residents have been getting vaccinated at a rate faster than ever before. At the beginning of the month, there were 97,959 residents who had their first dose of vaccine. By Friday, that number was at 122,729, an increase of 24,770.
At the beginning of June, there were 19,535 local residents who had their second dose and were fully vaccinated. By Friday that number was at 43,322 fully vaccinated, an increase of 23,787.
** This story was amended/corrected to include new numbers in the monthly total.