Public Health Sudbury and Districts (PHSD) reports 13 new cases of COVID-19 for Wednesday, April 21. Public Health also said there are now 149 active cases being monitored.
Also, since the PHSD began tracking COVID-19 cases just over 13 months ago, there have been 1,868 total COVID-19 cases confirmed locally. PHSD also said 1,719 of those cases have been resolved.
With respect to where the newest COVID-19 cases might have occurred, the PHSD daily update page reported that nine cases were found to have occurred within the Greater Sudbury Area and four cases occurred in the wider rural Sudbury district.
In terms of possible causes of the new cases, PHSD reported two cases associated with outbreak, 16 new cases linked to close contact of a confirmed case, six cases as being under investigation and one case of no known epidemiological link.
PHSD also reports general demographics each day about the people who are becoming infected.
Epidemiological data showed that the majority of local cases are persons in the 20 to 39 age category with 610 total cases (an increase of two).
The next highest group number was 479 cases for the 40 to 59 age group (an increase of one).
The next highest number was 426 cases for the 19 and under age group (an increase of six).
Seniors in the 60 to 79 age group amounted to 267 cases total (an increase of three), and people aged 80 and over are currently the lowest category with 86 cases (an increase of one). There were also zero cases reported in the "unspecified category".
The numbers above may not completely correspond with the daily case count because PHSD does not always report changes on the day they occur.
In terms of COVID-19 testing, 231,087 tests have been performed in the PHSD region as of today, an increase of 223.
As for local vaccinations, PHSD reported a total of 66,086 vaccines given in the entire PHSD area as of April 21 at 4 p.m.
VARIANTS OF CONCERN
PHSD is also reporting there are still five cases of "confirmed" variants of the COVID-19 virus, with no increase after many days.
There are, however, 666 cases that are "screened positive" for variants of concern, an increase of 11 cases over the number reported on Tuesday.
PHSD said additional time is required to genetically-sequence the virus in a positive sample and confirm it as a COVID-19 variant of concern.
At Sudbury's Health Sciences North, as of April 21 there are 22 patients with confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the hospital. As reported on the HSN website, this included four COVID patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
There are an additional nine admitted patients currently being "investigated" for COVID-19, and awaiting test results. There are none of those patients in the ICU at this time.
On the provincial COVID-19 register today, the Ontario government daily website reported 4,212 new confirmed COVID-19 cases across the province. Also today, the province reported 32 new deaths had occurred in the previous 24 hours.