Surrey has accounted for about one-quarter of all of B.C.’s COVID-19 cases as the B.C. Centre for Disease Control released the latest monthly data.
That’s despite having only about 11 per cent of B.C.’s total population.
Surrey’s share of COVID-19 cases has been dropping slightly since the end of December when Surrey had 31 per cent of the province’s total. As of Dec. 31, 2021, Surrey had recorded 16,109 cases of B.C.’s 51,300.
Between Jan. 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021, Surrey reported 37,158 cases. In that same period, there were 144,289 cases province-wide.
For the month of May, there were 4,012 cases in the region.
It’s a significant drop from the 7,043 reported in April, at the height of the third wave of the pandemic.
READ ALSO: Surrey records highest monthly increase in COVID-19 cases, May 6, 2021
Surrey has seen the most cases in the Fraser Health region since the start of the pandemic, followed by Abbotsford (8,800), Burnaby (8,140), Tri-Cities (7,031), Langley (4,898), Delta (4,815), Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows (2,956), New Westminster (2,692), and Mission (1,482).
With the exception of the first nine months of the pandemic (January to September 2020), Surrey has consistently recorded the most cases each month for any local health area.
It’s followed by Vancouver, which has recorded 22,253 from Jan. 1, 2020 to May 31, 2021. That’s about 15 per cent of the province’s total cases. For the first nine months, Vancouver was recording more cases than Surrey.
The lower case counts come as B.C.’s third wave levelled off in mid-May.
Meantime, South Surrey/White Rock recorded 148 cases in May, compared to the 545 in April. The BCCDC data separates South Surrey/White Rock from the rest of Surrey
By May 31, 2021, there were 2,666 cases in that region. That’s about two per cent of all the cases in B.C. at that point.
According to notes from the data, cases are mapped by location of residences, while cases “with unknown residence and from out of province are not mapped.”
It adds that the number of cases in the Local Health Authority, “may not represent the location of exposure,” such as people who were infected while travelling or working elsewhere.
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