Lowest number of new COVID-19 cases reported in Waterloo Region since mid-November

Waterloo Public Health reported only 28 new positive tests for the coronavirus on Tuesday, lifting the total number of cases in the area to 9,502.

This is the lowest number of new cases reported in the area since Nov. 19 when 24 new cases were reported.

It drops the rolling seven-day average down to 57.9, six lower than a day earlier.

In addition, another 73 people were cleared of the virus, lifting the total of resolved cases to 8,809.

This drops the number of active COVID-19 cases to 480, which is the lowest it has checked-in at since Dec. 17.

Unfortunately, there are still 37 people in area hospitals as a result of COVID-19 with 15 of those needing intensive care.

A second death in as many days was reported at the Chartwell Elmira Long-Term-Care home, lifting the death toll to 205.

There have now been five deaths at the home which has seen 43 residents and 32 staff members test positive since an outbreak was declared on Jan. 10.

The outbreak is one of 32 active outbreaks in the area as a pair were declared over with one coming from a congregate setting and the other occurring at a warehouse.

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Elsewhere, Ontario reported 745 new cases of the coronavirus on Tuesday, an underestimation of the day’s count, bringing the provincial total to 270,925.

The Ontario government noted that Toronto Public Health migrated all of their data to the provincial data system called CCM and it impacted the daily count.

“Most notably, (Toronto Public Health’s) case count is negative following the identification of duplicate cases as well as data corrections to some fields (e.g., long-term care home residents and health-care workers), resulting in an underestimation of today’s cases,” a government spokesperson said in an email.

The spokesperson also said case counts for other local public health units may be affected by the system outages related to the migration and “as a result, we anticipate fluctuations in case numbers over the next few days,” the spokesperson said.

The death toll in the province has risen to 6,238 as 14 more deaths were reported.

–With files from Global News’ Gabby Rodrigues