39 COVID-19 cases reported in Waterloo Region Friday

KITCHENER -

Health officials in Waterloo Region reported another 39 cases of COVID-19 on Friday.

Of the new cases, 37 care from the past 24 hours, while the others were added to previous days' totals.

Friday's update brings the total number of cases to 20,608 in Waterloo Region to date, including 20,082 recoveries and 305 deaths. There are 219 active cases in the region.

There are 10 people receiving treatment for COVID-19 in area hospitals, including two in the ICU.

There are 13 active outbreaks in Waterloo Region.

The breakdown of the 7,017 variant cases is as follows:

• 3,127 are the Alpha variant
• 21 are the Beta variant
• 98 are the Gamma variant
• 3,509 are the Delta variant
• 262 cases have had a mutation detected, but have not yet had a variant strain confirmed

Testing partners have performed a total of 639,755 COVID-19 tests to date. Waterloo Region's test positivity rate sits at 3.0 per cent, with a reproductive rate of 1.1.

The region updated its population data Friday to reflect 2020 census numbers from Statistics Canada. Due to an increase in population, there was a drop in the vaccine percentages for both eligible and total population.

With the updated population numbers, the region is now reporting 88.60 per cent of the eligible 12 and older population has received one dose, while 85.89 per cent has two doses. Of the whole population, 76.94 per cent has received one dose, while 74.60 per cent are fully vaccinated.

Ontario reported 793 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, the highest daily case count since mid-September.

The rolling seven-day average for new cases is now at 625, up from 537 this time last week.

There are 610,222 lab-confirmed cases to date in Ontario, including 595,169 recoveries and 9,959 deaths.

With files from CTV Toronto