The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is reporting 93 new COVID-19 cases in the region.
Of the confirmed cases announced Thursday morning, one is outbreak related, 36 are being blamed on close contact with another confirmed case, 28 are considered community, one is travel related to Michigan and 27 are still under investigation.
There have been 366 variant of concern cases confirmed in the region, five of which have been identified as the United Kingdom variant.
There are now 452 active cases in the community, 129 are variant of concern cases.
"Any of these variants could have the same potential in terms of the spread and these variants are the reason for a rapid transmission where the transmission rate could increase significantly by up to 30 to 50 per cent in most of these cases dealing with the variants," says Medical Officer of Health Dr. Wajid Ahmed.
He says 28 per cent of the current active cases are variant of concern cases.
"It really is important to know that these variants are in our community and at least one third of our cases that we report are now from the variants of concern and in some days we are coming close to 50 per cent of the cases," he says.
Dr. Ahmed says when there is a variant case, it's spreading more rapidly.
"The entire household they get sick and then anyone who is identified as a close contact they acquire this disease at a much rapid wait then the others and this is exactly the risk is with all these variants of concern and further re-enforce the importance of following our public health measures," says Dr. Ahmed.
19 confirmed cases are in hospital with four in the Intensive Care Unit.
The region has now recorded 14,602 cases since the pandemic began with 13,741 listed as resolved.
There are six workplace outbreaks and three school outbreaks.
There have now been 409 COVID-19 related deaths in Windsor-Essex.
Locally, a total of 124,594 doses of the vaccine has been administered.