FILE PHOTO - Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry answers a reporter's question at a COVID-19 media briefing, June 29, 2021.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED / Province of B.C.

The Interior Health region had 587 new cases of COVID-19 over the weekend, more than half of the 1,079 recorded in B.C. as a whole.

Because of the high case counts, a COVID outbreak has been declared for the Central Okanagan and tough new measures were put in place on Friday to curtail social interactions.

“Last week reflects exposure events from a week to 10 days before,” provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said in a news briefing today, Aug. 9. “We are seeing a levelling off but we are not yet seeing a decrease in cases. We hope to see the impact of that (new measures) in the next week."

READ MORE: Bars and nightclubs hardest hit by new COVID restrictions in the Central Okanagan

There was a record number of new cases in Interior Health on Friday with 275 reported.

The provincial numbers, reported in a news release, don’t break the regional numbers down by each day over the weekend but, in the three days since Friday, they have averaged 196 a day in Interior Health.

Of the new provincial cases, there were 422 from Friday to Saturday, 364 from Saturday to Sunday and 293 in the last 24 hours.

Over those three days, there were 258 new cases in Fraser Health region, 142 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 62 in Vancouver Island Health region and 30 in the Northern Health region.

Of the 3,036 active cases in B.C., 1,755 are in the Interior Health region.

There are 68 people currently in hospital in B.C. with 20 of those in intensive care.

There were seven more deaths in the past three days, four of which were in the Interior Health region. That brings the provincial total to 1,777.

There are outbreaks in seven long-term care homes in B.C., with four of those being in the Interior Health region: Cottonwoods Care Centre in Kelowna, Brookhaven Care Centre in West Kelowna, Nelson Jubilee Manor and Kootenay Street Village in Cranbrook.

On the positive side, the vaccination rate for those over the age of 12 has hit 82 per cent provincewide, with 70.3 per cent of residents having received their second dose.

Anyone can now get their second dose after 28 days but those who are not in areas of high case numbers or working in fields with high exposure rates are encouraged to wait longer in order to build better resistance.

READ MORE: Early 2nd doses of COVID vaccine now being offered outside Central Okanagan hotspot

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News from © iNFOnews, 2021