The Kamloops Local Health Area continued to see a modest drop in COVID-19 cases last week, but other parts of Interior Health have seen a significant spike.
In the Kamloops LHA there were 10 new cases last week, between June 13-19, making now seven straight weeks where the number of new cases has dropped. The week prior, there were 12 cases in the region. The LHA includes Kamloops, Sun Peaks, Chase, Barriere, Little Fort, Logan Lake, Savona, Tobiano and communities in between.
The Central Okanagan and Vernon LHAs saw the highest number of cases of any region in Interior Health, as has been the case the entire month of June. But both regions have seen drops in new cases each week this month, as the Central Okanagan dropped to 57 new cases last week while Vernon reported 25.
The largest spike in the health authority appears to be in the southeast Kootenays. There were 21 new cases in the Windermere LHA and 19 in the Fernie LHA, which respectively had the highest number of cases on a per-capita basis in the entire province last week. There were also 10 new cases in the Cranbrook LHA and two in the Kimberley LHA last week, and no other jurisdiction in the Kootenays reported any new cases.
Despite the spike in cases in Windermere, the local health area is tied for the second-highest vaccination rate in all of Interior Health, at 78 per cent for people 12 and older. Only Revelstoke has a higher vaccination rate (81 per cent), while Kamloops-South also has a 78 per cent vaccination rate. It’s unclear how many new cases in Windermere are local cases versus cases among travellers.
Meanwhile, in regions closer to Kamloops, the North Thompson, 100 Mile and Merritt LHAs all reported zero cases last week.
The South Cariboo LHA, which includes Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Lytton and Clinton, saw four cases last week, which is the highest per capita new cases in the Kamloops area. That region also had a test positivity rate of 25 per cent, meaning 16 people were tested there for COVID-19 last week.
In the past two-and-a-half weeks, Interior Health has seen more new COVID-19 cases each day than Vancouver Coastal Health, which has double the population and is far more densely populated.
And on Wednesday, for the first time this year, Interior Health had more new cases than any other health authority, including Fraser Health which is the highest-populated and most densely populated jurisdiction of the province. IH had 41 new cases Wednesday, out of 87 new cases across the province.
Interior Health has typically held weekly media briefings to convey COVID-19 information to the public, but it has not held one of those briefing at any point this month so far.
