Dr. Julie Emili, an associate medical officer of health for the region, says the community is on the cusp of seeing new COVID-19 case rates escalate because of the delta variant and warns people need to be careful as more things open up. Public health reported xx new cases on Friday.
Active cases also rose slightly to 312, up from 307.
There were no new deaths reported Thursday. The total number of deaths in Waterloo region linked to COVID-19 sits at 256.
There have been a total of 16,070 cases since March 2020 with 15,492 marked as resolved.
There were 18 people with COVID-19 in the region s hospitals as of Thursday, a rise of one, with nine of those people in the intensive care unit.
The region reported there were 3,285 cases that have tested positive for a mutation or variant. Of those:
2,901 are confirmed to be the B117 variant first detected in the U.K.
29 are the P1 variant first detected in Brazil.