148 new COVID-19 cases in B.C.; 5 reported in Interior Health region

B.C.’s provincial health officer has announced 148 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours for a total of 8,543 provincewide.

In the Interior Health region, five new cases were reported for a total of 520 since the start of the pandemic, according to a joint statement issued today, Sept. 24, by Dr. Bonnie Henry and deputy minister of health Stephen Brown.

Two people have died from the virus in the past 24 hours. Both deaths were in the Fraser Health region.

There are 1,371 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, 3,417 people are being actively monitored by public health after being exposed to the virus, while 6,917 people who tested positive have recovered.

As of today, 61 people are in hospital with COVID-19 and 20 of them are in intensive care. The rest are recovering at home in self-isolation.

There haven’t been any new community outbreaks, but the ministry points out there continue to be community exposures.

"How we make out this fall and winter is in our control,” reads the statement. “To ensure we are ready for the challenging respiratory season, now is the time to get back to basics with our COVID-19 safety precautions to allow us to push the curve back down.

"We can reduce our personal COVID-19 risks by using our layers of protection every day and remembering that the more people we see, the higher our risk will be.”

There have been 3,094 cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 4,361 in the Fraser Health region, 203 in the Island Health region, 278 in the Northern Health region and 87 cases of people who reside outside of Canada, the ministry said.

— This story was updated at 7:55 a.m. Friday, Sept. 25, 2020 to correct the number 184 to 148 in the headline.

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