Updates coming to Region’s COVID-19 and vaccine distribution dashboards
Waterloo Region – To provide residents with more accurate and relevant information, a significant number of changes will be made to the Region of Waterloo’s COVID-19 summary dashboard and the vaccine distribution summary dashboard during the month of February.
Updates to the dashboards will be launched in two phases on February 11 and February 18. A number of enhancements will improve the user experience and make data easier to visualize. For example, a date slider will allow users to view the data for the time period of interest more easily.
In response to the surge in cases due to the Omicron variant, testing in Ontario has been limited to select individuals such as those most vulnerable to severe illness from COVID-19. As a result, positive cases confirmed by PCR testing are an underestimate of the actual number of individuals with COVID-19 in the community. Some of the indicators previously shared on the COVID-19 summary dashboard no longer provide an accurate summary of population-level transmission in Waterloo Region.
The vaccine distribution summary dashboard is adding a gauge for per cent third-dose coverage among those 18 years of age and older, the number of fourth doses administered, and a figure displaying the doses administered over time by dose number. Some changes to coverage calculations include the assignment of age groups based on age at the time the data was extracted, as well as the removal of deaths from the vaccination coverage numerator. As vaccination rates are not changing rapidly, the vaccination data will be updated once a week on Thursdays.
Throughout the pandemic, Region of Waterloo Public Health has been reporting COVID-19-related information on its website through its three dashboards: COVID-19 summary dashboard, vaccine distribution summary dashboard, and wastewater surveillance dashboard. Residents can access the dashboards on the Region of Waterloo website: