Waterloo Public Health released numbers regarding rates of coronavirus infection in individual municipalities on Friday.
The agency shared the rates per 100,000 people rather than as a total using the region’s population estimates from a report tabled before council in February.
Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, the region’s acting medical officer of health, says they chose to release the numbers in the interest of transparency and because they showed that the COVID-19 virus was affecting every municipality.
“I think the message is that people can get it anywhere in our region,” she explained.
Wang said the numbers are affected by the concentration of testing in some areas.
“They are, by default, skewed in how they show the distribution of the cases because of the testing priorities,” she noted.
For example, Kitchener would have the highest numbers because it has the highest population density, is home to two hospitals and countless long-term care and retirement facilities.
She says no one is safe from catching the disease regardless of the numbers released Friday.
“We know this because of the way it spreads,” Wang said. “It spreads broadly. It spreads easily. And so this there’s no reason to believe that somehow a higher risk would be only in one area or municipality.”
The number’s released Friday show that 125.1 of every 100,000 people in the region have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The region has further broken down the number to show that 76.1 of those 125.1 positive cases have been related to facility outbreak while the remaining 49 were not.
According to regional estimates, the 2019 population would be 617,870, which roughly works out to the 773 cases which were reported for the region by Waterloo Public Health on Friday.
Here are the numbers for the other cities and townships in the region:
Cambridge: 48.1 per 100,000 (33.7 non-facility, 14.4 facility)
Population: 139,350 – Cases: roughly 67
Kitchener: 214.1 per 100,000 (66.5 non-facility, 147.5 facility)
Population: 261,610 – Cases: roughly 560
North Dumfries: 64.9 per 100,000 (46.3 non-facility, 18.5 facility)
Population: 10,790 – Cases: roughly 7
Waterloo: 50.7 per 100,000 (39 non-facility, 11.6 facility)
Population: 146,010 – Cases: roughly 74
Wellesley: 43.1 per 100,000 (17.3 non-facility, 25.9 facility)
Population: 11,590 – Cases: roughly 5
Wilmot: 55 per 100,000 (18.3 non-facility, 36.7 facility)
Population: 21,810 – cases: roughly 12
Woolwich: 164.7 per 100,000 (33.7.3 non-facility, 131 facility)
Population: 26,720 – cases: roughly 44