COVID-19 update: B.C. adds 742 cases over long weekend as seven-day average nears 200

VANCOUVER -

British Columbia recorded another 742 cases of COVID-19 and one related death over the long weekend, health officials said Tuesday.

The latest numbers from the Ministry of Health pushed the province's rolling seven-day average for new infections to 196, up from 35 in early July. The last time B.C.'s average topped 200 cases per day was on June 5.

The average has already far surpassed the heights of the province's first wave of the pandemic, but remains far below the peak average of 1,130 daily cases recorded during the third wave in April.

Officials said 160 infections were identified from Friday to Saturday, followed by 196 from Saturday to Sunday, 185 from Sunday to Monday, and 201 from Monday to Tuesday.

Of the total, 395 cases came from B.C.'s Interior Health region, which has been experiencing a unique surge in COVID-19 transmission. The increase recently prompted officials to declare an outbreak in the Central Okanagan and re-impose a local mask mandate.

B.C.'s active caseload increased to 1,544 on Tuesday, which is up more than 300 from the end of last week and the highest that figure has been since June 13. The majority of those – 847 cases – are in Interior Health, compared to 348 in Fraser Health and 212 in Vancouver Coastal Health.

Only 42 and 24 of the active cases are in the Island Health and Northern Health regions, respectively.

The number of coronavirus patients in hospital also increased to 53, including 19 in intensive care.

Meanwhile, another 128,063 shots of COVID-19 vaccine were administered over the B.C. Day long weekend, the vast majority going to second doses.

The Ministry of Health said 81.4 per cent of eligible residents age 12 and older have received at least one dose of vaccine, up just 0.3 percentage points from Friday. The number who have received both shots increased to 67.3 per cent, up from 64.9 per cent.

A total of 6,902,320 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines have been given out across B.C. so far, 3,121,311 of which have been second doses.