COVID-19 outbreak declared at Waterloo Region hospitality workplace as cases rise by 15

COVID-19 cases climbing in Waterloo Region From CTV Kitchener: COVID-19 cases are climbing locally and across the province, including cases in students.

KITCHENER — Region of Waterloo Public Health officials have declared a COVID-19 outbreak at a hospitality workplace after two people there tested positive.

The business was not named, and it's not clear whether the outbreak is connected to staff, customers or both. In a statement, public health officials said that the outbreak was reported in a food and beverage services setting.

The hospitality industry category is expected to be further broken down in the future.

"Expanding our hospitality category will help keep the community informed about outbreaks in our community and where they’re occurring," said Dr. Ryan Van Meer in a statement.

"The names of the settings will not be reported unless there is an increased risk to the general public or Public Health needs to ask the general public to self-identify as contacts of a setting."

This is the second active workplace outbreak in the region: the other is at F45 Training on Glasgow Street in Kitchener, where three people have tested positive for COVID-19.

The region's online dashboard reported another 15 cases of the disease on Monday, including seven that were reported that day.

The health agency's Twitter account issued a reminder over the weekend that its dashboard numbers are current until 5:30 p.m. the day before, which explains why more cases are sometimes added to the totals from previous days.

There have now been 1,607 cases in Waterloo Region, including 1,361 resolved cases and 120 deaths.

That leaves 126 active cases in the region, a number that has spiked through September. At the start of the month, there were only 42 active cases in the region.

Of the active cases, nobody is hospitalized. To date, 251 people have been hospitalized with COVID-19, including 60 people who needed care in the ICU.

There have been more than 80 new cases of the disease reported in the last week, with the bulk of those being reported in people aged 20 to 29. The region's dashboard shows that on Sept. 14, one week ago, there were 257 cases in that age range. One week later, there are 295 cases in that demographic.

In addition to the new outbreak reported on Monday, there are six other active outbreaks in Waterloo Region. They are described as follows:

As a whole, Ontario set another months-long record on Monday, reporting 425 new cases of COVID-19.

That's the highest number of cases since June 2, when the province reported 446 cases.

Monday’s case update brings the total number of lab-confirmed cases in the province to 47,274. That number includes 41,146 recoveries and 2,829 deaths.