Waterloo Region sees biggest jump in number of coronavirus cases

Waterloo Region experienced its biggest one-day jump in total novel coronavirus cases to date as Public Health confirmed 17 more on Friday.

The agency says that 148 people in the region have now tested positive for COVID-19.

The 17-person jump surpasses the 15 new cases announced on Thursday, a mark which also occurred on March 23.

“As we are seeing that cases continue to rise across Ontario, we should expect that we will continue also to have new cases in Waterloo Region for some time” Waterloo Region’s acting medical officer of health Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang said during a media briefing on Friday morning. “So we should expect to see more cases, more hospitalizations, more patients who will need care in ICU.”

Initially, the agency’s website said there were no new cases at long-term care homes but a short time later it was updated to note that a third resident had been infected at High View Residences, along with a second employee of Sunnyside Home, and a staff member at Chartwell Westmount.

“Given what we’ve seen elsewhere in the province, we should expect to see the numbers of homes under the outbreak and the number of cases rise here locally as well,” Wang said.

Wang says she does not believe that we are close to seeing the end of the pandemic although she believes the measures that are in place have had a positive effect.

“That doesn’t mean that the efforts we’ve made as a community to date haven’t had an impact,” she explained. “I believe it has and it has prevented many cases, hospitalizations and deaths that we would have otherwise seen.”

The agency updates its website on weekdays and Friday’s update shows no cases have been resolved since the previous one.

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Thirty-six of the 148 cases involve people working in the healthcare field. Of the 119 cases that remain unresolved, 22 people are currently in hospital.

The region has conducted 2,242 total tests to this point. A total of 427 tests are still awaiting results while 1,667 have come back negative.

The province confirmed 462 new cases on Friday, bringing the Ontario total to 3,255.