By Gordon Lambie
On its first day back under the province’s highest level of COVID-19 control measures, the Eastern Townships reported 43 new cases and one new death in the community. The total number of active cases decreased when compared to Sunday’s reports, however, dropped to 512. The total number of people in the region who have contracted the virus since the start of the pandemic reached 13,817, 12,756 of whom have recovered.
The number of people hospitalized for COVID-19 in the Townships reached 35 on Monday, but the number of people in intensive care remained stable at five.
The Province of Quebec as a whole reported only 662 new cases, bringing the total number of people infected to 358,796 and dropping the number of active cases to 8,143. Another six deaths saw that total rise to 10,993, and hospitalizations increased by four to 543 hospitalizations. Meanwhile the number of people in intensive care decreased by one, to 123.
Although many of the outbreaks being tracked across the region reported no new cases on Monday, the Éden sur le Lac Residence had 10 residents and one employee added to the tally of linked infections, and the number of individuals from the Polyvalente Montignac high school in Lac-Mégantic linked to an outbreak rose to 38.
Several government officials, including health minister Christian Dubé hailed Monday as the day that the province finished completely vaccinating all those living in long term-care homes, although the local figures, updated as of Sunday, indicated that only 64.4 per cent of that group had received their second dose in the Eastern Townships.
The province reported a total of 3,781,451 doses administered so far, accounting for a first dose in 42.6 per cent of the population. The Townships fell only slightly behind that figure, with 211,764 first doses, or 39.4 per cent of the local population. Second dose coverage remains in the low single digits on both the regional and provincial scale, ranging from 1.7 per cent in the Townships to 2.1 per cent across Quebec.
