THUNDER BAY – The local death toll associated with COVID-19 rose to 47 on Saturday, marking the eighth death attributed to the virus in the past week among Thunder Bay District residents.
The Thunder Bay District Health Unit also reported 29 new cases Saturday, which marked exactly one year since the agency reported the district's first confirmed COVID-19 case. Of those, 23 were in the Thunder Bay area, five in unspecified district communities, and one in a district First Nation.
With 54 previous cases declared resolved, the active case count fell to 233, less than half the record total of 470 reported on March 7. It’s the lowest active case count since Feb. 21.
The number of district residents hospitalized with the virus also continued to decline, falling by eight on Saturday. That left 20 residents hospitalized with COVID-19, with three of those in the Intensive Care Unit.
That positive trend could allow elective surgeries to resume at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre as early as this week.
Of the 29 cases reported Saturday, five were attributed to household contact, 11 to other close contact, seven had no known exposure, and an exposure category for six others was still pending.
The health unit had a testing positivity rate of 7.6 per cent for the most recent period it reported, March 14 to 20. It reported a total of 3,576 tests conducted in that period, though the agency noted testing data for three days of that week was still incomplete.
The TBDHU has reported a total of 2,768 confirmed cases since the pandemic began. Of those, 2,488 were considered resolved and 233 active, with 47 deaths in which the virus was determined to be either a contributing or underlying cause.
