COVID-19 case numbers won't decline if people relax vigilance, say health officials

By the time the province's stay-at-home order is set to end next week, the region's medical officer of health says she hopes local COVID-19 numbers will put the region somewhere approaching the "orange" zone of reopening.

But that will take work, Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang told reporters during a briefing Friday.

The province's colour-coded reopening framework is on hold during the stay-at-home order. But if the order were to lift right now, Wang said Waterloo region's COVID-19 numbers put it firmly in the "red" zone.

"The threshold for reaching the red zone is 40 cases per 100,000 per week. We're at 70," she said.

Wang said the region has been at red zone levels — or higher — consistently since November of last year. While COVID-19 numbers are heading in the right direction now, she said it's still too soon to consider loosening public health guidelines.

"Even though we're going down now, and it seems like we're on the other side of the peak of the third wave, we still have work to do. We still need to keep up with the precautions," said Wang.

"That's why the stay-at-home order is still essential."  

Guelph, Wellington also in red right now

It's a similar situation in Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph, said medical officer of health Dr. Nicola Mercer.

"Currently, our seven-day moving average of cases would put us in 'red,'" Mercer said in an email Friday.

"The trend however is in the right direction (trending downwards)."

Mercer said Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph is getting closer to being able to roll back pandemic measures. By the end of May, Mercer said that region expects to be near a 65 per cent vaccination rate.

"[Two] weeks later we should see significant improvement in cases locally," Mercer said.