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Weekly COVID-19 cases drop by only one in New West

B.C. is flattening the curve and New West cases stabilized
Chris Campbell
Chris Campbell
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While Henry said the vaccine will be effective against the mutated strain, she underscored that people must continue to follow the provincial COVID-19 guidelines in the meantime. Photo via loops7 / Getty Images

New COVID-19 cases in New Westminster dropped by just one last week compared to the week before.

The latest data from the BC Centre for Disease Control show New Westminster had a total of 85 new COVID-19 cases during the period of Dec. 13-19 – one fewer than from Dec. 6-12.

That’s just slightly under the 94 cases New West had in all of October and above the 71 cases in September.

New cases of COVID-19 jumped in New Westminster in November – by far the worst month for the city since the start of the pandemic.

According to the BCCDC, New Westminster has seen 624 COVID-19 cases between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, 2020.

An independent school in New Westminster is reporting five COVID-19 exposures.

Purpose Independent Secondary made its first appearance on Fraser Health’s schools website, which is updated daily with possible exposures to COVID-19 so school staff, students and parents are aware of the exposure risk and know it’s being followed up by Fraser Health. The Dec. 21 update states that exposures occurred at the New West- based independent school on Dec. 7, 10, 14, 15 and 16.

The strict health orders issued in B.C. in November appear to have successfully bent the COVID-19 curve in the province, B.C. Health Officer Bonnie Henry said Wednesday.

Numbers continue to rise, however. For the last 24 hours, B.C. recorded 518 new cases of COVID-19, with more than half again coming from the Fraser Health region (332). Henry said there have been another 19 deaths, bringing the death count up to 796.

According to what Henry presented on the province’s COVID trajectory for December, the infection contact rate index has now fallen below 1 – meaning each infected person is in turn infecting one person or fewer.

That number, Henry said, is the difference between the COVID curve skyrocketing versus plateauing and falling over the next month.

“That’s where we are now, which means what we are doing is working,” Henry said of the stricter restrictions introduced in November. “But we cannot let up... It doesn’t mean we are out of the woods.

“We have bent our curve slightly. But we need to be cautious, because it would not take much to get us back into the danger zone.”

  • With files from Chuck Chiang, Glacier Media, and Theresa McManus