Region’s COVID-19 situation more stable than growing provincial averages

coronavirus trend, with case numbers below a growing provincial average.

Currently in the red zone, the region is inching towards “orange” under the Reopening of Ontario Act.

“To date, we have not experienced the increase in cases and hospitalizations seen in Ontario,” medical officer of health Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang said during the region’s weekly pandemic briefing March 26.

If indicators continue to head in the right direction, Wang says it could be weeks until the region is moved to the next zone, which would allow for some loosening of regulations.

“The province generally looks for stability of indicators for a couple of weeks, before moving an area to a lower level,” she said.

At midweek, there were 299 active cases of COVID19 in the region, up more than 40 from the end of last week. Province-wide, 2,336 new cases were reported in the past day alone.

The region also continues to see variants of concern and have now identified 306 cases. “Of that total, 22 case it is happening convert for the B.1.1.7 variant and the remaining 284 cases have been screened positive. I anticipate that these are all B. 1.1.7 variants,” said Wang, citing figures from Public Health Ontario’s lab system.

“Very recently, Public Health Ontario lab has decided to no longer sequence everyone that has screened positive to determine whether they have the B. 1.1.7 or another variant... they’re able to see that the vast majority who have screened positive turnout to be a variant and the large majority of the time they are a B. 1.1.7 variant.”

This change, however, does not mean that variants of concern will not continue to be monitored in the region.

“We’re not stopping monitoring for other variants, so we’ll find out if we start to see other types of variants become prominent in Waterloo Region. But at this time, the large majority of the ones that they have screened for a variant are turning out to be B. 1.1.7. That’s the case in Ontario. And so that’s why I expect that to be the case in Waterloo, where we have only seen B. 1.1.7 among our confirmed cases of various,” explained Wang.

With the battle headed in the right direction, it remains crucial to continue remaining vigilant following the public health measures such as physical distancing, mask-wearing and frequent hand-washing, she stressed.

“We have seen a significant resurgence of COVID in Ontario – we’re back up to over 2,000 cases a day in Ontario. There are certain hot hotspots that have jumped right back up into grey zone levels very quickly.”

Overall, the region has seen 11,885 cases since the pandemic began more than a year ago. Of those, 11,337 have been resolved, a recovery rate of 95 per cent. The number of fatal cases hit 242 at midweek.

In Wellington-DufferinGuelph, there were 140 active cases. That catchment area’s cumulative total was 5,188, of which 4,942 (95.3 per cent) have been resolved. There have been a total of 106 fatalities since the pandemic began, just one in the past two weeks.

The province is seeing growth in the number of weekly cases, with the total now at 347,570.

There have been 7,351 deaths attributed to the virus, representing a mortality rate of 2.1 per cent. The ministry reports 320,409 cases (92.2 per cent) have been resolved.

The latest numbers from Health Canada show 46,395 active cases. The cumulative total of confirmed cases now stands at 976,598, with 22,926 related deaths, a mortality rate of 2.3 per cent.