Five New COVID-19 Deaths, 35 New Cases As Of Tuesday Morning

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Last updated: Tuesday April 14th, 9:56am

The Windsor Essex County Health Unit has confirmed 35 additional cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday morning, bringing the local total to 349.

There have been five new deaths in Windsor-Essex as of Tuesday bringing the local death toll to 13. Dr. Wajid Ahmed, Medical Officer of Health says three females in their 90s, 1 female in their 80s and 1 female in their 70s passed away and ten of the total local deaths have occurred at long-term care homes.

“As we can see most of these cases are now coming from long-term care homes that are currently in outbreak and we are working closely with these homes to manage the outbreaks in a timely manner,” he said. “It is with great regret and sadness that we are still losing our loved ones to COVID-19 in our community and we all need to work together to prevent these losses.”

Dr. Ahmed said since last week, the Health Unit’s focus has shifted to prevention and measures to contain the spread in local long-term care and retirement homes. As of Tuesday, seven local facilities have outbreaks.

He said testing has increased at local long-term care homes and Windsor Essex EMS has been helping to conduct test swabs of residents. Dr. Ahmed said the new focus for long-term care homes is to test for asymptomatic cases so that COVID-19 can be detected early and so outbreaks can be suppressed early. He said long-term care homes now have universal mask-wearing policies that require all staff to wear masks, whether there or not there are active outbreaks.

Cases increased from 314 reported on Monday April 13th to 349 on Tuesday April 14th.

The Health Unit says 2,589 tests have been conducted as of Tuesday and 355 tests are still pending. They say 30 people locally have recovered.

Dr. Ahmed noted that thanks to the public’s cooperation and government leadership, Windsor-Essex has kept ninety-five per cent of cases out of the local acute care/hospital system. But he said cases numbers are still going up and urged the public to continue following all public health measures.

“As a community we need to be mindful that these measures are in place for the long run,” he said.

“Now is not the time to let out guard down,” says Health Unit CEO Theresa Marentette. She said the Health Unit continues to urge everyone to stay home unless absolutely necessary.