There are currently 987 people in hospital with COVID in B.C.

The number of people in hospital with a COVID diagnosis has grown to 987 as of today, Jan. 24. That's up from 924 on Friday but the number of people in intensive care units has dropped by one to 129.

Those numbers were included in a Ministry of Health news release. They include everyone with a positive COVID test. It’s estimated that 45% of them have mild or no symptoms.

There were 4,997 B.C. residents who tested positive to PCR COVID tests over the weekend, including 2,163 from Friday to Saturday, 1,489  from Saturday to Sunday and 1,345 in the last 24 hours.

There were 1,251 Interior Health region residents with a positive COVID test over the weekend. The release does not break out how many there were per day but that averages 417 per day, down from the 655 new cases on Friday.

There were 1,702 cases reported in the Fraser Health region, 862 in Vancouver Coastal, 626 on Vancouver Island and 555 in the Northern Health region.

Since most B.C. residents with COVID are told they don’t need to get tested or had rapid tests, the actual number of cases is likely three to four times higher, health officials have said.

There were 24 new deaths recorded over the weekend, including one in the Interior Health region, bringing the provincial total since the start of the pandemic to 2,552.

READ MORE: COVID-19: A timeline of the pandemic and how it changed our lives over the past two years

There are 31,822 active cases in B.C.

The vaccination rate for people over the age of 12 is 92.6% with at least one dose, 89.9% with at least two doses and 40.4% with three doses.

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