WATERLOO —
One more Waterloo Region resident died of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours as health officials logged 17 new cases.
The latest death, a man in his 80s, brings the region’s death toll to 286.
Of the 17 new cases, 16 are linked to Wednesday and one is from a previous reporting period. Five of the latest cases are in youth 19 and younger.
Waterloo Region has now logged 18,594 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, including 18,161 resolved infections and 139 active cases.
The number of people hospitalized and in intensive care dropped slightly in Thursday’s update. Hospitalizations dipped by one, now down to 10, while the number of people receiving treatment in area intensive care units declined by two, down to nine.
The Region of Waterloo only counts active, infectious patients in hospitalization numbers, but counts both active and resolved cases in ICU figures. This means ICU numbers can sometimes be higher than hospitalizations.
Two COVID-19 outbreaks were declared resolved on Thursday. There are now nine active outbreaks across Waterloo Region.
Another 29 infections were confirmed as variant of concern cases in Thursday’s update, nearly all of which were identified as the Delta variant.
Waterloo Region’s variant breakdown is as follows:
- 3,122 are the Alpha variant, first identified in the United Kingdom and originally known as B.1.1.7
- 21 are the Beta variant, originally detected in South Africa and previously referred to as B.1.315
- 98 are the Gamma variant, initially discovered in Brazil and labelled as P.1
- 1,369 are the Delta variant, first found in India and previously called B.1.617
- 267 cases have had a mutation detected, but have not yet had a variant strain confirmed
Meanwhile, health partners across the region administered 2,213 vaccine doses on Wednesday, bringing the total number of jabs put into arms to 791,942.
More than 83.9 per cent of the eligible population have now received at least one dose, while 74.59 per cent of residents 12 and older are fully vaccinated.
Another 2,080 residents must become fully vaccinated to reach the 75 per cent target.
On Thursday, health officials in Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph announced 75 per cent of eligible residents in its jurisdiction were now fully vaccinated.
Province-wide, health officials logged 513 new COVID-19 cases in Thursday’s update, marking the first daily case count of more than 500 since mid-June.
For the past two days, daily case counts were in the 300s.
Thursday’s cases bring the seven-day rolling average to 375, a spike from 214 at this time last week.
Ontario’s positivity rate currently sits at 2.1 per cent.
The province has confirmed 553,962 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began.
From CTV Toronto.
