B.C. health officials are confirming 900 new PCR-confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 28 deaths in their most recent weekly update.
The latest BC Centre for Disease Control update recorded cases reported to local health authorities between July 31 and Aug. 6.
In the Fraser Health Authority, 290 cases were reported, while there were 218 in Vancouver Coastal Health, 183 in Interior Health, 169 in Island Health and 40 in Northern Health.
However, B.C. currently only reports positive results from a PCR test, and only immunocompromised people, people with high-risk conditions, people 70 or older, people who aren’t fully vaccinated, or people whose medical care may be affected by a positive result are eligible for PCR tests.
The province does not have a way for people to report rapid test results and does not include rapid test results in COVID updates.
According to the BC CDC’s COVID-19 dashboard, 385 people are currently hospitalized from the disease with 23 of those patients in critical care units.
In the Island Health region, there are 72 people hospitalized and eight in critical care.
There have been a total of 380,174 cases reported and 26,462 hospitalizations in B.C. since the pandemic began, though again, those numbers do not take into account the number of people sick with COVID-19 who did not receive a PCR test.
New cases, hospitalizations and deaths appeared to be trending downward from the last epidemiological update, though case numbers still appear to be higher on average than they were in June.
The test positivity rate for B.C. was at 10.1 per cent as of Aug. 6, and was 15.4 for Island Health for the same date.
Deaths each week are conditional numbers subject to change. In the previous update, the BC CDC reported 28 deaths between July 24 and July 30, and are updating that week’s deaths to 54.
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