Interior Health now home to five Omicron cases

Interior Health’s number of cases involving the Omicron variant has risen to five.

There have now been 135 cases of the mutated strain identified in the province. The highest concentration of those cases are in the Island Health region where there have been 71 confirmed cases.

Meanwhile, the Interior’s active COVID-19 case count rose to 644 Thursday as 99 new cases were identified in the region.

Those were part of 753 new cases across the province, bringing B.C.’s active case count up to 3,878.

B.C.’s hospitalizations due to COVID-19 dropped to 184 patients Thursday, and intensive care patients also declined to 70.

However the Ministry of Health did report three new deaths which were located in the Fraser Health, Vancouver Coastal Health and Island Health jurisdictions. A total of 2,396 British Columbians have died due to the virus.

Vaccination rates continued their steady climb Thursday as 86.8 per cent of British Columbians aged five and older have received their first dose of a vaccine and 82.5 per cent have received two shots.

Additionally, 91.6 per cent of eligible British Columbians aged 12 and over have had one dose of a vaccine, 88.7 per cent have had two jabs, and 14 per cent have received a third or booster shot.

The Ministry of Health notes that over the past week the unvaccinated accounted for 44.2 per cent of new COVID-19 cases, while the fully vaccinated made up 53.7 per cent of cases.

However, the unvaccinated accounted for 66.2 per cent of hospitalizations over the past two weeks, while the unvaccinated made up 29.8 per cent of COVID patients.

The Ponderosa Lodge in the Interior, the only health-care facility in B.C. considered to be an outbreak site, was declared over Thursday.