The chief of medicine at Bluewater Health says the number of new COVID-19 cases seems to have stabilized.

Lambton Public Health says there has been only one person who tested positive for the virus on April 30. There are 182 people who have now tested positive for COVID-19 with 90 people who have recovered. Fourteen people have died since March 25.

Bluewater Health has just 11 people who have tested positive in the Intensive Care Unit – two are on ventilators according to Dr. Michael Haddad in a video released earlier this week. Nineteen others are in the COVID-19 unit who are waiting for test results.

“This is down from our peak a week ago, when we had a total of 32 hospitalized patients, 11 of them who were critically ill,”

Haddad says because of the community effort, the hospital system was not stretched for resources as many had feared. “Hospital occupancy is at 60 per cent, due to collective effort of the community…we seem to have stabilized the number of new cases in the community and that took the pressure off the hospital dramatically.”

Haddad says officials are watching for a “sustained decline” in the number of cases before ramping up services at the hospital including elective surgery.

The number of people who have died from COVID-19 across Ontario continues to rise; the province is reporting 1,121 people have now died from the virus – another 39 people yesterday. The province says 861 people from long term care homes have died.

There were 421 people diagnosed with COVID-19 across the province yesterday – a 2.6 per cent increase. Two hundred and twenty-five people are in hospital, 175 in the intensive care units.