KITCHENER -- Region of Waterloo Public Health added another 43 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday.

That update brings the number of COVID-19 cases in the region to date to 14,898, including 14,181 recoveries and 254 deaths.

"Trends are moving in the right direction, but our trends remain high," Medical Officer of Health Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang said during a regional council meeting on Tuesday afternoon.

There are 445 active cases in the region.

Dr. Wang said the weekly incidence rate in Waterloo Region is at 67 cases per 100,000 people per week.

She added variant cases make up the vast majority of cases in the region.

The region's COVID-19 dashboard shows a total of 2,432 cases have screened positive for a variant of concern, including 2,135 identified as the B.1.1.7 variant, three as the B.1.351 variant and 17 as the P.1 variant.

There are 44 people receiving treatment for COVID-19 in hospital, including 34 in the ICU.

"We're seeing improvements, but we're not out of the third wave yet," Dr. Wang said.

According to Dr. Wang, the Region of Waterloo saw case counts increased during the third wave, but not as high as some other hot spot areas in Ontario.

Tuesday's dashboard update shows the seven-day positivity rate in Waterloo Region sits at 4.6 per cent. The reproductive rate is at 0.9.

Regional partners have performed 476,511 COVID-19 tests to date.

Dr. Wang added that vaccines were redistributed over the past two weeks to increase supply in hot spot areas. The region expects a boost in vaccine supply through the end of May and into June.

On Tuesday, pre-registration opened to everyone aged 12 and older.

She encouraged people to continue following public health measures to continue driving case counts down.

Ontario reported its lowest case increase since late March, adding 2,073 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday.

The rolling seven-day average for new cases dropped to 2,914, down from 3,509 this time last week.

Ontario's positivity rate sits at 8.5 per cent.

To date, the province has reported 497,092 lab-confirmed cases of the disease, including 457,599 recoveries and 8,342 deaths.