Photo: The Canadian Press
The Delta variant now accounts for the vast majority of all recent COVID-19 infections inside BC.
In its weekly update, the BC Center for Disease Control says that 89 percent of the 314 positive tests between July 18 and July 24 in the Interior Health region were B.1.617.2 or Delta variant. The other 11 percent of the cases were the P.1 or gamma variant.
This high proportion of the Delta variant is somewhat unique in the interior. In the same period, 61 percent of the new cases across the province were the delta variant, with the gamma variant making up 28 percent and the B.1.1.7 or alpha variant making up 10 percent. Any variants now make up about 99 percent of all new cases in BC
Vancouver Island is solely concerned with new cases of the Delta variant, but there were only 30 new cases in the region between July 18 and July 24.
The Delta variant was first discovered in India in late 2020 and is still the most commonly transmitted variant of the COVID-19 virus to this day.
The spread of the Delta variant is one reason for the widespread transmission of the virus in recent weeks inland, particularly in the central Okanagan.
On Wednesday, Interior Health declared a COVID-19 outbreak across the region and reinstated the mandate for indoor public masks only in the central Okanagan. More than half of the daily COVID-19 cases in BC now come regularly from the interior, even though the region makes up less than 15 percent of the province’s population.
The latest geographic data from the BC CDC shows that the daily rate of infection in parts of Kelowna has risen to levels only reached in the hardest-hit parts of Surrey during the peak of the third wave this spring.
Downtown Kelowna was the hardest hit, with an average daily infection rate of 40 cases per 100,000 between July 23 and July 29. That equates to more than 100 new infections this week in downtown Kelowna alone.
The Glenmore area recorded a daily infection rate of 30 cases per 100,000 people, while Rutland recorded a daily rate of 21 per 100,000 people.
Due to the high concentration of new cases in the area, the BC CDC has started using a new color on its COVID fall rate map to accurately represent the high fall rates in downtown Kelowna, Glenmore and Rutland.
The number of cases also increased significantly in the past week in the Okanagan Mission, West Kelowna and Lake Country, reaching 19, 18 and 12 daily infections per 100,000 people, respectively.
Meanwhile, new cases have slumped in the lower mainland over the past month. While Surrey was once by far the hardest hit location in the province, with nearly 2,000 weekly cases in April, the city now averages just one daily infection per 100,000 residents.
Interior Health continues to urge residents of Central Okanagan to get vaccinated to help contain the spread of the virus.
