THUNDER BAY – The Thunder Bay District Health Unit reported 29 new COVID-19 cases Sunday, with the number of active cases remaining near record levels.
With 21 previous cases declared resolved, the active case count crept upward slightly from the previous day, to 343 – just short of a record 349 active cases Friday.
The district also passed the 1,000 case mark in 2021, with 1,027. There were 585 in all of 2020. There were 641 cases in February, a single-month high, surpassing the 386 recorded in January.
The rising numbers have prompted the province to return the health unit to Grey-Lockdown, and local school boards to move to virtual learning for at least two weeks.
All 29 cases reported Sunday involved Thunder Bay area residents. Of those, 18 were considered a result of close contact with a previously identified case, one had no known exposure, and an exposure category for the remaining 10 was pending.
There were 26 Thunder Bay District residents in hospital with the virus as of Sunday, with 9 of those in the Intensive Care Unit.
The regional hospital warned of record numbers of COVID-infected patients Saturday, with 35 admitted and 10 of those in the Intensive Care Unit. The hospital serves a large region that includes patients from outside the district, including those from the Northwestern Health Unit.
The TBDHU had an incidence rate of 175.4 cases per 100,000 people for Feb. 18 to 24, the most recent rolling 7-day period reported in Public Health Ontario data.
It's the highest rate in the province by far, nearly doubling the second-highest rate of 89.7 for the same period in Peel.
The district had seen a total of 1,612 confirmed cases as of Sunday. Of those, 1,239 were resolved, 343 were active.
The deaths of 30 district residents are now attributed to COVID-19. There were no further deaths reported Sunday, after three announced earlier in the week.
According to Public Health Ontario data released Feb. 27, none of the three COVID-19 variants of concern tracked by the Ontario government had yet been detected in the district.
One case of variant B.1.1.7, also known as the U.K. variant, has been detected in the Dryden area, in the neighbouring Northwestern Health Unit.
