KITCHENER -- Health officials in Waterloo Region reported 41 more cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, along with one additional death related to the disease.
That brings the total number of cases to 11,972 so far, along with 11,415 resolved cases and 243 deaths.
The region's COVID-19 dashboard shows 452 cases have screened positive for a variant of concern. Of those, 29 are confirmed as the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the U.K.
There are 309 active cases in Waterloo Region.
Twenty-one people are receiving treatment for COVID-19 in hospital, including seven in the ICU.
There are 14 active outbreaks in the region.
The region won't update its dashboard on Good Friday.
Speaking at the region's COVID-19 update on Friday morning, Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang said the region's weekly incidence rate has risen to 50 cases per 100,000 people. Last week, it was 38 cases per 100,000 people.
Premier Doug Ford announced Thursday afternoon the entire province would move into a shutdown for four weeks as of April 3 at 12:01 a.m.
Ontario reported its highest case count increase since Jan. 22, adding 2,557 new cases of the disease. Officials have reported more than 2,000 new COVID-19 cases for eight straight days.
There were 62,290 tests performed in the past 24 hours, bringing the positivity rate to 4.8 per cent.
The seven-day average for new cases has risen to 2,341, up from 1,794 last week.
Ontario has reported 352,460 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 so far, including 324,196 recoveries and 7,389 deaths.
