January could have been 'much worse,' but health officials learned these lessons from Omicron surge

Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang can envision a January that went much, much worse than the one Waterloo region experienced.

She can picture more COVID-19 infections, more people in hospitals sick with the virus, more deaths.

But the region's medical officer of health says high vaccination rates in the region, plus people following public health guidance to wear masks and limit social gatherings, helped save lives this month.

"I am just very grateful to our community for stepping up and getting their third dose and also working together," she said during Friday's media briefing.

"It would've been much worse if we had lower rates of vaccination in our community."

In late November, people were getting ready to celebrate the holidays and making plans to attend New Year's Eve parties. 

But that changed abruptly in December as COVID-19 cases started to rise dramatically due to the high transmissibility of the Omicron variant.. By the end of the month, there had been 5,213 cases reported in Waterloo region.

Then came January.

Pandemic restrictions were put back in place. Students moved to remote learning for the first two weeks of the year. Hospitalizations started to rise.

On Monday, Region of Waterloo Public Health reported 392 new cases had been reported since Friday. Broken down by day there were:

That meant there were 12,357 COVID-19 cases reported this month alone. It accounts for more than 32 per cent of all the cases reported in Waterloo region since the pandemic began in March 2020.

It also represents only a fraction of the actual number of cases that have circulated in the community, because for the past few weeks, not everyone has been eligible to be tested for the virus.

It has not, however, been the month with the most COVID-19-related deaths reported. That was April 2020 when 74 deaths were reported.

On Monday, the region reported 11 COVID-19-related deaths. That brought the total number in January to 40.