Interior Health’s COVID-19 numbers climb past 600 with one more death in region

Interior Health’s active COVID-19 case count continued to climb Wednesday, reaching 606 as 86 new cases were recorded in the region.

The cases were part of 3,015 recorded throughout British Columbia.

The Interior’s COVID-19 death toll also rose by one Wednesday to 287. The death was one of nine recorded across the province, and to date 2,313 British Columbians have died due to COVID-19.

The Ministry of Health also reported that 318 British Columbians were in hospital due to COVID-19 complications Wednesday, 109 of whom were in intensive care.

The provincial vaccination rates saw some slight gains Wednesday, as the first dose rate rose to 91 per cent, and the second dose rate increased to 87.4 per cent.

The Ministry of Health reports that, of the new cases recorded in the past week, 54 per cent were people who were unvaccinated, while 41.9 per cent were fully vaccinated.

A look at the past two weeks showed that the unvaccinated made up 61.5 per cent of COVID-19 hospitalizations, while 30.8 per cent of COVID patients were fully vaccinated.

The outbreaks at Village by the Station (Penticton) and Sun Pointe Village (Kelowna) were declared over Wednesday, leaving just 10 health-care facility outbreak sites in the province, and just one in the Interior, at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.

• Unit 5S has 29 cases: 21 patients and eight staff/other with two deaths connected to the outbreak.
• Unit 6S has 10 patient cases.
• Unit 5N has 12 cases: six patients and six staff/other.