After reporting six COVID-19-related deaths on Friday, Waterloo Public Health reported another five on Monday, raising the death toll in the area to 339.
A total of 26 of those victims have come over the first 24 days of January.
One of the victims was a resident of the Village of Winston Park retirement home in Kitchener where an outbreak was declared on Jan. 5, which has been connected to 41 staff members and 17 residents.
There are now 78 active outbreaks across the region with 37 of those occurring in long-term-care in retirement settings, 30 in congregate settings and the remaining 11 are at the three area hospitals.
The space crunch continues in area hospitals as there are currently 146 patients in area hospitals suffering from COVID-19 with 25 of those in need of intensive care.
Waterloo Public Health reported another 604 new positive tests for COVID-19 on Monday, raising the total number of cases in the area to 33,649.
This three-day total is less than half of the 1,272 cases reported last Monday, as it also drops the rolling seven-day average number of new daily cases down to 286.6.
That said, the agency has warned that due to testing availability, case counts on its dashboard are likely lower than the actual number of cases in Waterloo Region.
Another 1,256 people were also cleared of the virus, lifting the total number of resolved cases in the area to 33,649.
This leaves the area with 2,708 active COVID-19 cases, down just over 700 from what was reported on Friday.
On the other end of the spectrum, the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations is slowing again as more and more people get a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine and more children get first and second doses.
Waterloo Public Health reports that there have now been 1,211,548 COVID-19 vaccinations done in the area, which is 8,985 more than was reported. Last Monday, the three-day increase came out to 17,554.
A total of 5,804 area residents got a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine, raising the total number of residents in the area to 255,058 as we slowly close in on the 50 per cent mark.
Another 2,345 area residents also got a second dose and are therefore considered to be fully vaccinated, raising that total to 471,468 which is around 77.9 per cent of the area’s population. The latter number climbs to 82.86 per cent when one discounts those who are ineligible to be vaccinated.
A total of 52.7 per cent of those aged 5-11 in Waterloo Region have now had at least a dose of COVID-19 vaccine while 13.76 per cent have now had two jabs. It has been estimated that there are around 45,000 kids in this age group.
Elsewhere, Ontario reported 3,861 people in hospital with COVID on Monday with 615 in intensive care units.
This is an increase of 64 hospitalizations and an increase of 11 in ICUs over Sunday’s report, although officials noted not all hospitals reported updated figures due to the weekend.
Meanwhile, the province also reported 4,790 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, though that is an underestimate of the true widespread transmission of the virus due to recent testing restrictions. The provincial case total now stands at 1,001,455.
Of the 4,790 new cases recorded, the data showed 814 were unvaccinated people, 182 were partially vaccinated people, 3,496 were fully vaccinated people. For 298 people the vaccination status was unknown.
The death toll in the province has risen to 11,004 as 36 more virus-related deaths were added from over the past month. Officials noted one death from over a month ago was removed from the total.
— with files from Global News’ Gabby Rodrigues