Four new cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed locally in London-Middlesex Saturday, one day after zero new cases were reported.
According to the Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU), the new cases bring the region’s total number of COVID-19 cases to 495, which includes 48 deaths.
The death count has stayed the same compared to the day before, but the number of recoveries rose by six to 363.
As of Saturday, 458 of the region’s cases have been reported in London, where all four new cases were confirmed.
Elsewhere, there have been 20 cases in Strathroy-Caradoc, seven in Middlesex Centre, four in North Middlesex, four in Thames Centre and one each in Lucan-Biddulph and Southwest Middlesex.
It’s unclear how many cases remain active in each location.
A chart from the MLHU showing the number of cases in London and Middlesex by reported date, Jan. 24 to May 22, 2020.
Middlesex-London Health Unit
Around 20 per cent of the region’s cases have involved hospitalizations, including 5.66 per cent who have been admitted to intensive care.
A total of 17 COVID-19 patients were being treated in University and Victoria hospitals as of midnight Friday, according to London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC).
The number of active outbreaks remains unchanged at seven, all of which are at local long-term care and retirement homes.
The most recent outbreak was declared on Wednesday at Henley Place, a long-term care home in London. It’s the second outbreak to be declared at the home, after an outbreak that was active from March 28 until May 17.
A chart from MLHU showing the number of cases in London and Middlesex by association with a long-term care home, retirement home, or other, Jan. 24 to May 22, 2020.
Middlesex-London Health Unit
Outbreaks remain active at Country Terrace, Mount Hope Centre for Long-Term Care (St. Mary’s 5th Floor), Waverly Mansion, Sisters of St. Joseph, Meadow Park Care Centre and Kensington Village (LTCH).
As of Saturday, 98 cases have been reported in long-term care homes involving 58 residents and 40 staff members, while 63 cases have been reported in retirement homes involving 43 residents and 20 staff members. Twenty-one deaths have been reported at long-term care homes, and seven at retirement homes. These numbers remain unchanged from Friday.
At least 41 staff members at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) have tested positive during the pandemic, a figure that remains unchanged from its previous update on Wednesday. It’s not clear how many cases have resolved and where the staff worked within LHSC.
Provincially, Ontario reported 412 new cases of the novel coronavirus Saturday morning, bringing the total number of cases in the province to 25,040.
The death toll increased by 27 to 2,048.
Over 19,100 cases are considered resolved, which makes up 76.5 per cent of all confirmed cases.
Just over 11,000 additional tests have been conducted, and around 5,900 cases are under investigation.
Nationally, Canada is seeing a total of 82,881 cases with 412 more Saturday, the death count rose by 27 to 6,277, and the number of recoveries increased by 379 to 42,986.
Elgin and Oxford
Numbers related to COVID-19 remain unchanged in the region compared to Friday, according to health officials.
The total number of COVID-19 cases sits at 71, with 57 recoveries — about 80 per cent — and four deaths.
Southwestern Public Health (SWPH) also announced an outbreak declared earlier this week at a long-term care facility in Ingersoll had worsened, with an additional six staff members having since tested positive.
In total, seven staff have been confirmed positive at Secord Trails Care Community as of Saturday morning. The outbreak was declared on May 18.
No residents have tested positive at the facility, according to SWPH.
The outbreak at Secord Trails is one of three to be declared in the region. The other two, at Beattie Manor and Caressant Care Bonnie Place, have since been resolved.
A chart from SWPH showing the per cent positivity rate of coronavirus tests in the region, April 3 to May 22, 2020.
Southwestern Public Health
Ten cases remain active in SWPH jurisdiction, nine of them in Oxford County, including four in Ingersoll, two in Tillsonburg and Woodstock, and one in East Zorra-Tavistock.
One is located in Elgin County in Malahide, according to the health unit.
As of Saturday, 3,983 tests had been administered in Elgin and Oxford counties. Of those, 259 were awaiting results.
Huron and Perth
No new cases, recoveries or deaths have been reported in Huron and Perth counties, health officials said Saturday.
This keeps the total number of confirmed cases at 50, of which 44 have recovered and five have died.
The region’s lone active case was reported on Thursday. It was the first time a case had been reported by the health unit in nearly three weeks.
A chart from HPPH showing cumulative totals of COVID-19 cases, deaths, and recoveries from early March to May 22, 2020. The health unit notes the graph uses symptom onset date for cumulative confirmed cases. If the person does not have symptoms, the date of the swab test is used.
HPPH
Health officials say the new case involves a resident of Maitland Manor, a long-term care home in Goderich, which has declared an outbreak — the region’s seventh and only active outbreak.
The resident is in stable condition and contract tracing is ongoing, the health unit said in a statement Friday.
Six other outbreaks have been declared over.
Nearly half of all cases reported in Huron and Perth, 23, are linked to the outbreaks, health unit figures show.
Of the region’s five deaths, four have been linked to the resolved outbreak at Greenwood Court in Stratford. The home saw 10 staff infections and six resident infections.
Stratford itself has seen 25 of the region’s reported cases.
As of Saturday, the health unit says 2,707 tests have been administered in Huron and Perth. Of those, 88 were awaiting test results.
Sarnia and Lambton
According to regional health officials, one more person has died due to COVID-19 and two more have tested positive. The number of recoveries remains unchanged.
As of late Friday night, the area is seeing 245 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 20 deaths and 173 recoveries — about 71 per cent of cases.
One of the cases is linked to Vision Nursing Home, a long-term care facility in Sarnia, which has had an active outbreak of COVID-19 since April 23.
It’s the fourth day in a row that cases have been confirmed at the facility, which has now seen a total of 20 residents and 19 staff test positive — one more from the day before.
Four residents of this facility have also died.
A chart from Lambton Public Health showing the number of confirmed cases in the county by reported date, March 24 to May 22, 2020.
Lambton Public Health
The facility is home to one of three active outbreaks.
The other two, at Marshall Gowland Manor and Village on the St. Clair, have seen one resident test positive and two residents test positive, respectively. Both outbreaks were declared active on May 15.
It’s unclear how many cases linked to the three outbreaks remain active.
Three other outbreaks at Landmark Village, Lambton Meadowview Villa and Sumac Lodge have since been declared over
Landmark Village remains the worst outbreak to be seen in the county, with 30 resident and 10 staff cases, and six resident deaths. It was declared over May 6.
Health unit figures show long-term care and retirement home residents make up nearly a quarter of all cases, 22 per cent, while health-care workers make up 17 per cent.
Sarnia’s Bluewater Health was treating five confirmed COVID-19 patients as of Saturday morning, in addition to eight patients who were suspected positive or awaiting tests — eight less from Friday.
— With files from Global News’ Ryan Rocca and Matthew Trevithick
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.
There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.
The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.
Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.
Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.
Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.
“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.
But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.
That includes his own teenage daughter.
“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.
It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.
“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”
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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.
New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.
“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.
The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.
Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.
It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.
Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.
Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.
The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.
The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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