Waterloo Public Health reported two more COVID-19-related deaths on Monday, lifting the death toll to 325, including 11 victims this month.
“Today we are reporting two deaths in our community related to COVID-19. One individual was a female in her 60s. The other individual was a male in his 80s,” Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, medical officer of health, stated.
“I wish to express my deep sympathy to the families of these individuals.”
The number of patients in area hospitals also took a large jump as there are now 136, including 17 people who need intensive care. On Friday, those numbers were reported to be 106 and 12 respectively.
There were another 1,272 positive tests for the coronavirus reported, bringing the total number of cases in the area to 35,106.
This drops the rolling seven-day average number of new daily cases back down to 492.
The agency warns that due to testing availability, case counts on its dashboard are likely lower than the actual number of cases in Waterloo Region.
Another 474 people have been cleared of the virus, lifting the total number of resolved cases in the area to 25,953.
This means the area now has 8,506 active COVID-19 cases, up from the 7,760 reported on Friday.
In addition, there are now 74 active COVID-19 outbreaks including 38 in long-term-care or retirement homes, 28 in congregate settings and eight in hospitals.
Meanwhile, Waterloo Public Health that there have now been 1,190,527 COVID-19 vaccinations done in the region, 17,544 more than was reported on Friday.
Another 13,212 area residents received a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine, lifting the total number to 239,135.
A total of 467,697 area residents have now had two doses of COVID-19 vaccine and are now considered fully vaccinated. This number is up 1,911 and means that 77.28 per cent of all area residents are now fully vaccinated, with that total climbing to 81.6 per cent when one discount those who are ineligible for COVID-19 vaccines.
Elsewhere, the latest figures released by the Ontario government Monday morning show there are 3,887 people in hospital with COVID-19, with 578 of them in intensive care.
Ontario also reported 8,521 new COVID cases Monday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the province since the pandemic began to 956,607.
Testing restrictions that recently came into effect mean that figure is an underestimate.
Just over 37,000 additional tests were completed. The test positivity rate was 24.2 per cent.
Twenty-three additional COVID-related deaths were also reported Monday, bringing the provincial death toll to 10,628. One of the deaths occurred more than one month ago and was added due to data cleaning, Public Health Ontario said.
— with files from Global News’ Ryan Rocca