In the last ten days, nine people have died of COVID-19 at Bluewater Health in Sarnia.

That’s according to the hospital’s Chief of Staff, Dr. Mike Haddad, in a social media post Saturday.

Lambton Public Health reported two more deaths from the virus as the Omicron variant continues to rage through the county. So far in this pandemic, 88 people have died in the county.

At Bluewater Health, there are now 33 people in hospital with COVID-19; 10 of the 14 intensive care unit beds have COVID patients in them – that’s 77 per cent. Officials say 90 per cent of the people in intensive care are unvaccinated.

Across the province, 2,594 people are in hospital and 388 are in the intensive care units. That’s up again from Friday when 2,472 people were in hospital including 338 in the ICU.

The number of outbreaks is also growing – there are now 12 up from nine Friday. Eight of those outbreaks were in long term care. Bluewater Health also reported an outbreak in its inpatient rehabilitation unit and Community Living Sarnia is also dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak.

Lambton Public Health doesn’t report details of outbreaks on the weekends.

Under the new testing guidelines, where only health care workers, vulnerable people and those in long term care are tested another 168 people have tested positive. Some of those results may be from a massive backlog of test results. Over 100,000 people are waiting for the results of their COVID-19 PCR tests.

In all, public health says there are 1,295 people ill with COVID-19 Saturday. Medical Officer of Health Dr. Sudit Ranade says most experts say those numbers are inaccurate and are likely four to five times higher.