KITCHENER -- Public health officials will be moving back the time that they update the region's online COVID-19 dashboard, pushing the daily update back to 1:30 p.m. instead of 10:30 a.m.

The change will replace the current method, where officials update the dashboard at 10:30 a.m. with figures reported from 5:30 p.m. the day before.

In a media briefing on Tuesday morning, Medical Officer Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang said that the changes should make the daily updates more current, but noted that numbers may still fluctuate over time.

"Due to the new provincial case and contact data system that all health units have to eventually be on, positive case information is automatically entered into our data system at all hours of the day," she said.

"In order to avoid the constant updating of the previous days' numbers, the COVID-19 dashboard will now be refreshed at 1:30 p.m. daily instead of 10:30 a.m. daily, and will contain data up to midnight the previous day."

The dashboard's current update process sometimes leads to inconsistencies in the daily epi-curves versus the overall increase in cases.

On Tuesday, for example, the region's total number of cases rose by 14, but the online dashboard showed only nine cases for the most recent day's tally. The other five cases had been added to previous days' totals.

"This change will make our reporting more timely and it will help clarify our daily totals better," Dr. Wang said.

The region will start with the new update time on Wednesday.

Through the dashboard, officials have reported more than 2,000 cases in Waterloo Region, including 1,791 resolved cases and 120 deaths. That leaves 94 active cases in the region.