COVID-19: Hamilton reports record number of new cases, but data delay is likely to blame
Published November 4, 2020 at 4:06 pm
On Wednesday (Nov. 4), Hamilton’s Public Health Services is reporting a record number of newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the community but it seems that a delay in processing the data has resulted in many of Tuesday’s cases being reported a day late.
Sixty-five new cases have been identified in Hamilton Wednesday, bringing the city’s total to 1,936. This comes a day after PHS reported just two new cases.
“All case data is reviewed for quality assurance before being included in our case counts,” a representative from PHS told IntheHammer in an email.
“There was a delay in this process yesterday which resulted in some cases not meeting the daily cut off for inclusion in the report, therefore, some of the cases being counted today should have been included in yesterday’s count.
“While there is an increase of 65 cases today, they then don’t all relate to today, but rather over the last two days, and so we wouldn’t consider them as indicative as being a high single-day count.”
This is the highest daily increase in Hamilton since May 15th when there were 61 confirmed cases in one day. At that time, those cases stemmed from one of Hamilton’s worst outbreaks at a long-term care facility.
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Four new outbreaks have been declared across the city as well: three workers at La Garderie Le Petit Navire Daycare have tested positive for the virus, one worker at Good Shepherd Men’s Centre, two patrons of the Echo Day Program, and one resident at The Village at Wentworth Heights LTC have prompted PHS to declare the outbreaks.
The outbreak at Chartwell Willowgrove LTC in Ancaster continues to add more cases. As of Wednesday, 26 residents and 20 staff members have tested positive for the virus.
There are currently 14 active outbreaks in the community at the moment.
As for the number of active individual cases in the community at the moment, that number has shot up to 221 (from 173 on Tuesday’s report).
The number of resolved cases is up to 1,667, accounting for 86 per cent of overall cases locally. The number of people who have died as a result of the virus remains 48.
To date, Hamilton’s COVID-19 assessment centres have completed 110,446 tests.
Meanwhile, Ontario is reporting 987 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday and 16 new deaths related to the novel coronavirus.
That brings the provincial total to 79,692 cases, which includes 3,182 deaths and 68,189 cases considered resolved.
Health Minister Christine Elliott says 319 of the cases recorded Wednesday are in Toronto, 299 are in Peel Region, 85 in York Region and 62 in Durham Region.
The province says it completed nearly 28,600 tests since the last daily report.
— with a file and photo from The Canadian Press
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