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No new cases of COVID-19 were reported Thursday in Chatham-Kent for the first time in almost a month.
The municipality’s cumulative total actually dropped by one to 336 cases because a false positive was taken off the books.
The last day with no cases reported by the Chatham-Kent public health unit had been July 15.
There are 77 active cases. Four people are hospitalized.
The two active workplace outbreaks are down to a total of two active cases.
There have been 257 recoveries, and “a large number of people” are about to join their ranks after going through an isolation period, said Dr. David Colby, Chatham-Kent’s medical officer of health.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing that active case number drop substantially,” he said.
Colby is “reasonably confident” that people with active cases and their close contacts are staying home when they’re told to.
“My team follows up either every day or, at the very least, every other day by telephone with every single person that is under isolation orders,” he said. “This is a tremendously labour-intensive task. It requires a lot of people spending a lot of time doing that.