Photo: BC CDC
New COVID-19 cases by local health sector, identified between December 6th and December 12th.
Cases of COVID-19 continued to rise in the Okanagan last week, but the South Okanagan saw the largest surge due to the outbreak at Oliver’s McKinney Place nursing home.
The BC Center for Disease recently began releasing detailed COVID-19 geographic data on a weekly basis showing the progression of the pandemic in local health areas.
The South Okanagan local health district, which includes the Okanagan Falls, Oliver and Osoyoos, had only nine new cases between November 29 and December 5, but the number of new cases had risen to 54 the following week.
This is because the outbreak at Oliver’s McKinney Place nursing home has now grown to 41 residents and 16 employees.
The number of cases also continued to rise in the Central Okanagan region, with 349 new cases in the past week alone. This is an increase of 11 percent over the 314 new cases in the region in the previous week.
After previously rising rapidly in the Penticton area, the numbers there fell slightly last week, with 34 new cases. 36 new cases were identified in the Vernon area last week, up from 21 the week before.
The weekly new cases of Kamloops fell slightly from the previous week by five to 21.
In the north of the province, there have been widespread increases in most local health areas.
Surrey remains the local health district with the highest number of new cases, with 1,484 cases. However, that’s a 6.5 percent decrease from the previous week. In many areas of the lower mainland, fewer new cases fell last week, suggesting that public health restrictive measures introduced in late November may make a difference.
Notable exceptions are Burnaby, where 341 new cases were found last week (up 43 percent from the previous week) and parts of Vancouver that saw smaller increases.
The Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, and Minister of Health, Adrian Dix, will hold a press conference Thursday afternoon to announce new cases from the health authority.
