KITCHENER -- Health officials in Waterloo Region reported 121 more COVID-19 cases on Tuesday.

It's the highest increase in cases reported in the region since Jan. 15, when 125 cases were added to the region's total.

Waterloo Region's COVID-19 dashboard shows 106 cases reported Tuesday, with other cases added to previous days' totals.

Active cases rose again Tuesday as well. The region is reporting 592 active cases Tuesday, the highest level since Jan. 27 when there were 600.

That brings the total number of lab-confirmed cases in the region to 12,825 so far, including 11,973 recoveries and 245 deaths.

There are 30 people in hospital receiving treatment for COVID-19, including 12 in the ICU. On Monday, hospitals across the province were told to scale back non-urgent surgeries.

A total of 858 cases have screened for a variant of concern in Waterloo Region so far. Of those, 40 are confirmed as the B.1.1.7 variant first found in the U.K.

The region's test positivity rate rose slightly Tuesday to 4.9 per cent. On Friday, the region reported it was 4.6 per cent.

The reproductive rate remains unchanged at 1.2.

Testing partners in the region have performed 443,387 COVID-19 tests to date.

Ontario reported 3,670 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday following two days of case counts increasing by more than 4,400.

The seven-day average for new cases is now at 3,868, more than 1,000 cases higher than it was last Tuesday.

Officials have reported 394,679 COVID-19 cases to date in Ontario, including 351,257 recoveries and 7,582 deaths.