It’s lucky number seven at Guelph General Hospital with the announcement today that there’s another COVID-19 outbreak at that facility. Since just before Christmas 2021, it’s seemed like there’s been a new COVID outbreak every couple of weeks, the last one was on April 5 and cancelled about 10 days later, but this outbreak comes at a moment as many outbreaks in area healthcare facilities have come to an end.

This new outbreak at the Hospital has been localized to the 5 West ward, and so far four patients have been confirmed to have acquired COVID-19 while in the hospital.

“Several steps have been taken to keep the virus from spreading,” said a media release from the Hospital. “These steps include; putting all patients in the unit in appropriate additional precautions, COVID testing of all patients in the unit, closing the unit to visitors except for compassionate grounds and increasing the cleaning being done including frequent cleaning of high touch and high traffic areas.”

It was barely two weeks ago that the Hospital announced that they were changing their policy to allow for more patients at the hospital to receive visitors. It also comes after a weekend that saw the region clear six different facilities of outbreaks including St. Joseph’s Health Centre, Norfolk Manor, and the Emma and Nichol units of the Village of Riverside Glen.

The are still outbreaks ongoing in both the north and south blocks of Manor 1 at Homewood Health Centre and on the first floor of the Lapointe Fisher Nursing Home on Metcalfe. All told these recent outbreaks represent 92 cases in residents and 20 cases among staff.

There are four other facilities around Wellington and Dufferin Counties that are still facing COVID-19 outbreaks as well.

The new case count in our region on Tuesday was actually pretty low. The number was 21, which is way down from the number of new cases on Monday after the weekend, but it also forced a dip in the number of confirmed active cases, which is now 427. On Friday there were 562 total active cases in Wellington, Dufferin, and Guelph.

The long-term trends are also way down, with the 7-day moving rate at 89.4 per 100,000, which is a decrease of nearly 37 points from last Friday.  Meanwhile, the test positivity rate is at 17.8 per cent, which is a decrease of over four per cent from the end of last week.

Guelph General Hospital is reporting that they have 19 total patients in the care right now with COVID-19, while 24 members of staff are COVID positive and 22 other staff members are awaiting test results. Public Health lists a total of 17 COVID cases in the region that are currently in acute care with two other COVID cases that are in area ICUs.