KITCHENER -- Public health officials in Waterloo Region reported its first case of the P.1 variant first identified in Brazil on Thursday, along with 64 more COVID-19 cases.
This comes one day after the first B.1.351 variant, first found in South Africa, was confirmed in the region.
That brings the total number of cases in the region to 13,003, including 12,114 recoveries and 246 deaths.
The region's COVID-19 dashboard showed 96 more cases have screened positive for a variant of concern, for a total of 997. Of those, 40 are confirmed as the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the U.K., and one each of the B.1.351 and P.1.
The number of active cases dropped slightly Thursday to 625.
Thirty-one people are receiving treatment in hospital, including 14 in the ICU.
There are 17 active outbreaks in the region.
Ontario broke another daily record Thursday, adding 4,736 new COVID-19 cases.
The rolling seven-day average for new cases now sits around 4,208.
To date, officials have reported 403,571 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the province, including 357,591 recoveries and 7,639 deaths.
