Waterloo Region Public Health reported five more deaths related to the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, including four from long-term care homes in Kitchener.
In its daily update, the agency says two more residents of Forest Heights Long-Term Care died while two more residents of peoplecare AR Goudie have also suffered COVID-19-related deaths.
Thirty-four residents of Forest Heights and four residents of peoplecare AR Goudie are among the 53 COVID-19-related deaths linked to long-term care or retirement facilities in Waterloo Region.
Sixty-six people have died in the region as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Waterloo Public Health provides a daily update based upon the totals accumulated at 7 p.m. the previous evening.
In Tuesday’s update, it says that 26 more people have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, bringing the overall total number of positive tests to 709.
Four-hundered and twenty of those are linked to nursing homes. A further 170 of those cases have been caused by community transmission while 83 involve close contact and a further 36 have been linked to travel.
The community transmission category is a catch-all for anyone who is not linked to the other three categories.
“If they don’t fall into one of those other three categories, then they’re considered community transmission,” Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, the Region of Waterloo’s acting medical officer of health, explained Monday.
She said that despite the fact that number appears low, that does not mean we should begin to lift some of the current community restrictions because the spread remains related.
“The cases in those homes come in from the outside,” Wang said. “So that’s how outbreaks begin. And so we need to keep community transmission at low rates.”
Provincially, there were 525 new cases of the novel coronavirus reported on Tuesday, bringing the provincial totals to 15,381 cases and 951 deaths.
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