Interior Health closes out week with 113 COVID-19 cases, one death

Mar 4, 2022 | 4:45 PM

For the second day in a row, Interior Health recorded the most new COVID-19 cases of any B.C. health authority.

The Interior was home to 113 cases Friday, nearly a third of the 340 identified across the province. Fraser Health had the second highest case count with 71.

There was one death linked to the virus recorded in the Interior, and eight were confirmed in B.C. To date, a total of 2,903 British Columbians have died due to COVID, with 359 of those reported in the Interior.

As of Friday, there were 484 British Columbians in hospital with COVID-19, down 27 from the day before. Of those patients, 69 were in intensive care, which is 10 fewer patients than in an ICU Thursday.

The provincial vaccination rates for eligible British Columbians age five and over rose to 90.7 per cent coverage for first doses and 86.4 per cent for second jabs Friday.

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The Ministry of Health said over the past week, the unvaccinated have accounted for 16 per cent of new cases while the fully vaccinated made up 80.8 per cent of infections.

Additionally, over the past two weeks the unvaccinated made up 28.1 per cent of COVID-19 hospitalizations while 66.9 per cent of patients were fully vaccinated.

However, after adjusting for age, the unvaccinated accounted for 109.3 new cases per 100,000 population while 49.3 per cent of cases were people who were fully vaccinated.

Using that same metric, the unvaccinated accounted for 30.2 COVID-19 hospitalizations over the past two weeks while the fully vaccinated accounted for six patients.

There were no new health-care facility outbreaks Friday, but the Polson Long Term Care outbreak in Vernon was declared over. There remained 20 ongoing outbreaks across B.C., 10 of which were located in the Interior.