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COVID-19 case count more than doubles in New Westminster

The official local case count hit its highest total in five weeks.
COVID test swab
Official COVID-19 case numbers in New Westminster are on the rise again, with 16 new cases in the latest reporting period — up from just six the previous week.

While COVID-19 numbers are continuing to fall provincewide, New Westminster is bucking the trend — in the wrong direction.

New Westminster had 16 new officially reported cases of COVID-19 between June 19 and 25, according to the latest information from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. That's highest official count since five weeks ago, when the city saw 18 new cases. 

Prior to this week, the previous two reporting periods had seen single-digit counts: six new cases last week and eight the week before that.

Those numbers do not reflect the total number of actual COVID cases in the city. Official public case counts are considered to be a vast undercount of COVID-19 cases in B.C., since the majority of people have not been eligible for testing since the beginning of 2022, when case counts shot up dramatically in the face of the original Omicron wave. 

Despite the increase this week,  local numbers remain much lower than they were at the peak of the original Omicron surge, when New Westminster's official case count soared to 214 (in the week of Jan. 18 to 24).

The provincewide picture continues to improve.

In its latest weekly update, for the period of June 19 to 25, the BCCDC reports that there were 620 new cases of COVID-19 in B.C., 169 hospital admissions and 17 deaths.

That’s down from 642 new cases, 273 hospitalizations and 32 deaths for the previous reporting period of June 12 to 18, and down from 62 deaths reported for the week of June 5 to 11.

Public health officials warn that a spike in cases is expected this fall and winter, as Omicron variants including BA.4 and BA.5 drive infections upwards.

— with files from Nelson Bennett, BIV

 

Follow Julie MacLellan on Twitter @juliemaclellan.
Email Julie, jmaclellan@newwestrecord.ca