THUNDER BAY – The Thunder Bay District Health Unit reported seven new cases of COVID-19 Saturday, with the number of active cases in the district falling to 54.
The health unit also reported five new previous cases had screened positive for COVID-19 variants of concern. There have now been 34 VOC cases confirmed in the district.
Four of the new cases are attributed to close contact, two to travel outside of Northwestern Ontario, while one had no known exposure.
Five were in Thunder Bay and the surrounding areas, and two were in unspecified district communities.
With 16 previous cases declared resolved Saturday, the number of active cases fell to 54.
There were six district residents in hospital, unchanged from the previous day. One of those people was in the Intensive Care Unit.
As of Friday, there were nine patients with the virus in care at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, which also serves patients from beyond the Thunder Bay District. Of those, three were in the ICU.
The overall hospital occupancy was approximately 72 per cent.
The TBDHU had an incidence rate of approximately 29.35 cases per 100,000 residents over the past week. That compares to a province-wide incidence rate that only recently declined below 180.
The health unit's testing positivity rate was 2.4 per cent on 2,704 tests conducted for April 18 to 24, the most recent week reported - a significant jump from a rate of 1.3 per cent the previous week.
The agency has reported 3,104 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Of those, 54 are active and 2,988 resolved, with 62 deaths in which the virus was an underlying or contributing cause.
