New Westminster's official COVID-19 case count has dropped again after jumping up last week.
The city saw 13 new officially recorded cases between Aug. 7 and 13, according to the latest data from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
Last week, the count had hit 18, up from 10 the week before.
As always, 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 in the face of the original Omicron wave.
By comparison, local numbers still remain much lower than January — when equally few people were eligible for testing but the city still saw more than 200 cases in a week (216 between Jan. 9 and 15).
COVID-19 hospitalization, critical care numbers fall B.C.
Provincewide hospitalization data is also continuing to improve, with slight declines over last week.
The number of COVID-19 deaths in the week up to Aug.13 fell to 24 from 28, while the number of infected hospital patients in the week up until today (Aug. 18) fell to 366 from 398. Of those in hospital with the disease, 22 are in intensive care units (ICUs), which is down by one from 23 one week ago.
Current hospitalization data is not available on a local level, so New Westminster-specific numbers are unavailable.
Where can I find B.C. COVID-19 data?
See the B.C. Centre for Disease Control reports for the latest variants of concern, local case maps, and vaccination data.
Follow Julie MacLellan on Twitter @juliemaclellan.
Email Julie, [email protected]
