KITCHENER -- Waterloo Region saw substantial increases across several COVID-19 metrics on Tuesday as public health officials continued to urge people not to gather for the holidays.
Region of Waterloo Public Health reported 90 new cases, marking the seventh time in the last eight days that cases have increased by 80 or more.
The total number of cases in the region now stands at 5,193. About 40 per cent of those cases have been reported in just the last month; on Nov. 22, there were just 3,090 cases, the region's online COVID-19 dashboard shows.
During a media briefing on Tuesday morning, Medical Officer of Health Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang said that the region's weekly incidence rate rose to 96 cases per 100,000 people, the seventh-highest in the province.
"We are headed in the wrong direction and we cannot wait until the province-wide lockdown begins before we reduce our social interactions," she said.
There were also four more deaths reported on Tuesday. Twenty people have died from COVID-19 since the start of December, the region's dashboard shows.
Eighty-eight more cases were resolved on Tuesday, bringing the total number of resolved cases to 4,443. Accounting for resolved cases and deaths, there are now 598 active cases in the region, the most there has ever been at a time.
The region's hospitalizations rose by almost a third on Tuesday as well, as the number climbed from 31 to 40. Of those, 12 people are currently being cared for in the ICU.
Public health officials also added another 2,196 new tests to their tally, which is updated every Tuesday and Friday. That works out to about 549 tests done per day since the last update and brings the total number of tests done in the region to date to 247,194.
