Following six straight weeks of double-digit new COVID-19 cases locally, infections declined significantly during the latest reporting period.
From Jan. 24 - 30, the Smithers Local Health Area (Houston to Witset) recorded just five new confirmed cases of the disease.
That is compared to 16 from Jan. 17 to 23, 32 the previous week, 25 the week before that and 20 in the last week of December.
That brings the total case count for Smithers LHA to 200 since January 2020.
New caseloads in the LHAs of the Northwest Health Service Delivery Area (HSDA) LHAs remained strong northwest of Smithers.
For the last week of January, Terrace had 61 new cases, Nisga’a 12 and Upper Skeena 8, all up slightly from the previous week.
The rest of the HSDA, however, had modest numbers or showed a significant decline with Prince Rupert at 15, Burns Lake 8, Nechako 8, Kitimat 4 and Haida Gwaii 4.
The aggregated LHAs of Snow Country, Telegraph Creek and Stikine reported no new infections.
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As of this morning, Northern Health was reporting 52 new daily cases. There were 397 active cases with 20 hospitalized and 16 receiving critical care.
There have been 85 confirmed deaths and 3,115 victims are considered to have recovered since the pandemic began.
A weekly report on Health Service Delivery Areas (HSDA), of which there are three in Northern Health, is expected later today.
editor@interior-news.com
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