KITCHENER -- Regional officials reported seven new cases of COVID-19 and 12 more resolved cases on Thursday.
The death toll remains unchanged from Wednesday at 112.
There are now 1,056 positive cases in Waterloo Region, including 687 resolved cases. Taking into account the death toll and resolved cases, there are 257 active cases identified in the region.
Those numbers may seem encouraging, but testing for the general public only began in Waterloo Region late last week.
Up until then, testing was prioritized for certain high-risk groups, like health-care workers and people at long-term care and retirement homes.
Once the one-time, whole-home testing of those facilities was done, the region was able to open up testing to a broader group.
The total number of tests reported in the region only rose by 77 from Wednesday to Thursday. A total of 14,577 tests have been done in Waterloo Region to date.
There are currently 33 people in hospital with the virus. Since the pandemic began, officials have reported a total of 216 people have been hospitalized with the virus at some point.
The status of outbreaks in long-term care and retirement homes in the region remains unchanged: there are still 12 active outbreaks, while 23 have been declared over.
At Conestoga Meats, the number of cases remains the same, too, with 89 confirmed cases.
As a province, Ontario reported 413 new cases and 31 deaths on Thursday, bringing the total for each to 24,187 and 1,993, respectively.
Of the total number of cases in the province, 18,509 people have recovered.
On Tuesday, the province initiated stage one of its recovery plan, allowing thousands of people to go back to work with strict COVID-19 measures in place.
This is a developing story. More to come…
