THUNDER BAY – The Thunder Bay District Health Unit reported 77 new cases of COVID-19 Friday, with the active case count rising slightly to 330 active cases confirmed across the district Friday.
The number of district residents in hospital with the virus rose to 13, up three from Thursday. Two of those people were in the ICU.
TBDHU residents accounted for half of the total COVID-positive patients at Thunder Bay’s regional hospital, which declared an outbreak in a fourth area Thursday.
Of those, 71 were in the Thunder Bay area, five in district communities, and one in a First Nation.
The active count was up six from the day before, with 70 previous cases declared resolved. The health unit also removed one previously reported case after data quality checks.
Friday marked a pandemic milestone, as the total number of COVID-19 cases confirmed in the Thunder Bay District Health Unit surpassed 6,000 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Of that total, nearly a third – 1,807 – were reported in just the first three weeks of 2022, reflecting the rise of the Omicron variant despite limited testing availability.
Health authorities including the TBDHU have warned that, with access to testing limited largely to vulnerable settings, case numbers are no longer a primary indicator of the virus's progress, saying metrics like hospitalizations and testing positivity rates may offer more insight.
The health unit's positivity rate was 23 per cent for the week of Jan. 9 to 15, up from 17.6 per cent the week before.
