Valley’s virus curve
Less than one-10th of 1% of people in the Okanagan have tested positive for COVID-19
Fifteen cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed among the 376,000 residents of the Okanagan in the past two weeks, newly released figures show.
That makes for a total of 348 residents across the Valley who’ve been infected since the start of the pandemic earlier this year.
The infection rate is 0.09 per cent of the Okanagan’s total population, the same as it was two weeks ago.
Transmission rates of the disease in the Okanagan remain among the lowest in the province, far below levels seen in the Lower Mainland communities south of the Fraser River, like Surrey and Delta, and less than half the rates now being seen in Northern B.C.
Every Thursday, the B.C. Centre for Disease Control releases infection numbers and transmission rates in all the health service delivery areas across the province.
The data also includes information on the age of patients in the different health regions, the rates of hospitalization, and the median age of those who’ve died of the disease.
In the past week, the BC CDC says, the total number of new cases across B.C. fell to 677 from 880 last week. The number of active cases province-wide has also decreased, to 1,261 from 1,371.
Since the start of the pandemic, 9,149 British
Columbians have been diagnosed with COVID19.
Of the total, 4,854 people - or 53 per cent - have been under 40 years old. None of them have died of the disease.
A total of 10 British Columbians between the age of 40 and 60 have died of COVID-19.
Seventy per cent of those who’ve died have
been over 80 years old.
More COVID-19 information for specific cities, such as Kelowna, Penticton, and Vernon, is released only once a month. To the end of August, the greater Kelowna area accounted for 86 per cent of all COVID-19 cases in the Okanagan, though the area’s share of the total population is 53 per cent.