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COVID-19

Community-spread cases of COVID-19 are in Interior Health region: Provincial health officer

Mar 25, 2020 | 4:01 PM

KAMLOOPS — The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in B.C. is rising daily, and the provincial health officer says community-spread cases are becoming more common.

In a news conference Wednesday (March 25), Dr. Bonnie Henry updated the latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the province.

There have been 42 new cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours in B.C.

In the Interior Health region, there are 46 confirmed cases. Henry says she doesn’t have the breakdown of community-spread cases in IH versus travel-related cases.

“Early on for Interior, as for everywhere else, but early on most of them were imported cases,” Henry said. “I know there has been some local transmission in Interior Health but I’m not sure the proportion. But we can look at that, we can look at it overall as well.”

Henry says the trend nationally has been an increase in community-spread cases.

“Travel-related ones have decreased — with travel being restricted — but we’re now seeing that there is transmission in communities, so [that is] why we’re putting in these broader community measures.”

Along with confirmed cases, Henry expects to address an estimate of how many undiagnosed COVID-19 cases there are in B.C. on Friday.

“I do have an estimate in my head, but that’s not a very stable estimate, if you will,” she said. “It changes day by day and we are going to be talking… in some detail about the modelling that gives us those estimates.”