Four new deaths of COVID-19 announced in B.C. update including 624 more cases

Vancouver -

Four more people died of COVID-19 in the 24-hour period between updates on the disease's spread in B.C.

The provincial death toll has now reached 1,996.

Health officials announced this as well as another 624 cases, in a news release Thursday afternoon. With fewer cases recorded in the latest update than in Wednesday's, B.C.'s rolling seven-day average dipped down to 655 from 685.

Unsurprisingly to those who've been monitoring the province's daily updates, Fraser Health was again the authority with the most new and active cases confirmed.

It's also the province's most populous health region.

Fraser Health added 258 more cases, followed by Interior Health's 118.

There were 91 more cases confirmed in Northern Health, 79 in Island Health and 78 in Vancouver Coastal Health.

Still, on a per-capita basis, Northern Health continues to have the highest rate of infection in the province by a wide margin.

The latest deaths were in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island.

The total known cases since the start of the pandemic is now at 191,748, and the total active cases in B.C. is 5,929.

Of those, 373 people are in hospital. A little over one-third (35 per cent) of hospitalized patients are being treated in intensive care units across B.C.

As has been noted often during recent health ministry updates, officials said Tuesday that people who are not fully vaccinated account for the majority of cases and hospitalizations.

Data from the past week, provided by the ministry, showed 70.8 per cent of newly confirmed cases were in people who were not fully vaccinated. Of those in hospital over the last two weeks, 78.3 per cent hadn't had both doses of vaccine.

As of Thursday, 88.5 per cent of eligible British Columbians have had at least one dose, and 82.1 per cent have had both. The province did not report on how many people have received their third shot, a booster currently being made available to residents of long-term care and assisted living facilities and those who are severely immunocompromised.

Thursday's update, which followed a report from the provincial seniors advocate on the spread of COVID-19 through care homes during the first year of the pandemic, did not include any new health-care facility outbreaks, leaving the total at 16.

However, Fraser Health announced earlier in the day that it was dealing with a new outbreak, suggesting the total is actually 17.