New COVID-19 cases and deaths have received less attention as an early intense flu season grips the province, but the pandemic continues with 117 new cases reported on Vancouver Island, 44 people in hospital and five new deaths, according to the latest B.C. Centre of Disease Control report released Thursday.
Official case counts do not include those who test positive for COVID with rapid tests but don’t report it to the health authority.
The B.C. Centre of Disease Control dashboard shows two of the 31 people in critical care in the province with COVID-19 and 44 of the 374 in hospital with the virus as of Dec. 15 are in the Island Health region.
An additional 27 deaths in B.C. — including five on Vancouver Island — as of Dec. 10 brought the total number of COVID-related deaths to 4,760 in B.C. since the pandemic was declared in March 2020, including 594 in Island Health.
To date, 39,612 cases of COVID-19 have been reported on Vancouver Island, compared with 170,547 in Fraser Health and 79,362 cases in Vancouver Coastal.
