Niagara Region Public Health has now confirmed one case of the Brazilian mutation of the COVID-19 virus in the region.
The variant, also known as P.1, has been determined to be the driver of the current outbreak in Brazil, as it is more transmissible and results in more severe illness while having a poorer response to the vaccine.
The confirmation of the variant being present in Niagara comes as Public Health also unveiled updates to its reporting on Thursday, now showing that close to 64 percent of all cases between April 16 - 22 were variant cases.
The new data set also shows that there is roughly a weeks' reporting lag on the new variants, of which 1,765 have been the U.K-variant and 684 that are still unspecified but are still decided to belong to some form of mutation. 41 cases presumed to be P.1 or B.1.351 that originated in South Africa, are still pending confirmation.
Niagara's known active cases is now closing in on 3,000, following 169 new cases that were reported on Thursday. St Catharines continues to be the center for active cases with over 800, while Thorold now has 169 cases. Niagara Health are also seeing more patients being admitted to hospital with the virus. On Wednesday afternoon, the hospital system reported caring for 90 patients with the virus, of whom 24 are in ICU.
Two new outbreaks were reported on Thursday. The list of health-care outbreaks remains unchanged, with the Welland Hospital outbreak still active since it was discovered on April 15.
Provincially, Ontario reported 3,871 cases on Thursday, following a somewhat downward trend in the past week.
