Stock image Region of Waterloo Public Health reported 54 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday. 45 were from Thursday, the other nine were added to previous daily totals. It puts the overall case count at 14,621. 52 people are receiving treatment in hospital --- 37 are in intensive care. The active caseload has dropped to 498. No new deaths were reported on Friday. The local death toll is at 253. Here are some other updates from the region's dashboard: 220,629 doses of the COVID vaccine have been administered --- 16,660 people in the region have been fully vaccinated (2.82 per cent) 2,262 cases have screened positive for variants of concern - 1,973 are the U.K. strain - two are linked to the variant first detected in South Africa - 16 are linked to the strain first found in Brazil - 271 cases where a mutation has been detected