Federal health officials say they are “keeping a very watchful eye” on COVID-19 severity indicators.

There has been an almost 13 percent increase in the average number of daily cases of COVID-19 over the past week in Canada. An average of more than 425 cases has been reported daily over that time.

While the government is monitoring overall numbers, it’s also concerned about the number of hospitalizations, critical care admissions, and deaths.

Those have remained stable.

But Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam says that those numbers have been known to be “late indicators” of COVID, lagging weeks behind overall realtime case counts.

In a statement released on Sunday (August 30), Tam notes that almost 50 percent of new cases among young adults between 20 and 39 years of age have occurred in recent weeks.

“Considering the many weeks of increased disease activity in younger individuals, there is a very real possibility of the virus reaching higher-risk populations,” Tam says.

As of today, there have been 127,673 cases of COVID-19 in Canada, including 9,113 deaths.