55 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Windsor-Essex, 1 additional death

The public health unit says COVID-19 has claimed another life in this region, bringing the death toll to 598 since the pandemic began.

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) said Tuesday that a man in his 80s who was not a resident of a seniors' home has died. As well,55 people are in hospital and three are in intensive care locally.

The recent rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations in Windsor-Essex is in line with a provincial trend. Across Ontario,there were1,366 people in hospital with COVID-19.

The province's Chief Medical Officer of Health,Dr. Kieran Moore, said Monday that Ontario will notbe reinstating the mask mandatesliftedin Marchdespite a sixth wave of COVID-19 that won't peak for several more weeks.

Moore saidit is clear Ontario is in a sixth wave of the pandemic driven by the BA.2 variant with public health indicators that have been worsening recently, the percentage of tests that are positive, the number of hospitalizationsand COVID-19 activity in wastewater surveillance.

He said the peak of the wave may see up to 600 patients in ICU, but the province's health bureaucracy has assured him hospitals have capacity to care for those people.

As of Tuesday, there are19 active COVID-19 outbreaks in Windsor-Essex. A dozenof the outbreaks are at long-term care or retirement homes, four are on hospital units and there are three community outbreaks.

The health unitalso reported 152new high-risk cases of COVID-19, and383are active overall.Currently, only certain groupsare eligible for apolymerase chain reaction (PCR) test in Ontario, meaning the case count only reflects a portion of the active cases.