As COVID-19 case counts continue rising province-wide, the Okanagan’s numbers are trending in the right direction.
Data released on Thursday by the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) on Thursday, Aug. 13, shows the Okanagan region has recorded just 21 of the provinces 637 new cases of the virus reported between July 31 and Aug. 13.
This is a clear disparity to the numbers released between July 10 and July 23, when the Okanagan topped the province with 107 of the 340 cases reported in that period. That increase was linked largely to exposures at private parties in the Kelowna area in early July.
The BCCDC releases numbers by the smaller health service delivery areas, including the Okanagan, only once a month, while the numbers by health authority are reported on a daily basis.
Over the past two weeks, the Fraser Health South and Vancouver areas have topped the province in new cases, with 205 and 142 respectively.
As of Thursday, B.C. has 578 active cases of the virus. Nine of those people are in hospital, four of whom are in intensive care.
Through contact tracing, 1,878 people are in self-isolation due to being exposed to someone else infected with the respiratory illness.
The low rate of hospital admissions is likely associated with the younger age of recent cases, according to the BCCDC’s weekly surveillance report.
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