New Westminster's COVID-19 case count has dropped again.
Between June 12 and 18, New Westminster saw just six new reported cases of COVID, according to the latest B.C. Centre for Disease Control data. That's down from eight the week before and 14 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.
Nonetheless, the single-digit number is a positive sign in a city where the official case count had soared to 214 five months ago (Jan. 18 to 24), as the first Omicron surge drove case counts up around the province.
Provincewide, the latest hospitalization data continues to show improvements.
The 273 people in B.C. hospitals with COVID-19 is the fewest since March 26, when there were 260 such people. Of those in hospital as of June 23, 28 are in intensive care units (ICUs). That was up by nine over the previous week.
COVID-19 deaths continue to accumulate, but the 26 presumed COVID-19 deaths in the past week is just over half of the 50 such deaths reported one week ago. (The total includes anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 within 30 days and then died.)
Local breakdowns aren't available for hospitalization data.
Another local breakdown that's no longer available on the BCCDC Surveillance Dashboard is test positivity rates. Last week, test positivity in New Westminster had dropped from 12% to 6%.
– with files from Glen Korstrom, BIV
Follow Julie MacLellan on Twitter @juliemaclellan.
Email Julie, [email protected].
