For the fifth time in a week, British Columbia has broken a record for COVID-19 cases reported in a 24-hour period.
Between Friday and Saturday, the province reports 2,552 people tested positive for the virus. The previous record was 2,441 cases in a single day, set during the last reporting period of Dec. 24.
A total of 6,288 new cases were detected through between Dec. 24 and Dec. 27. This includes 2,023 new cases from Saturday to Sunday and 1,713 new cases from Sunday to Monday.
Due to staffing issues over the holiday the province has not released updated numbers for hospitalizations, deaths or vaccinations. The numbers for Dec. 27, it said in a news release, should be considered preliminary.
British Columbia’s seven-day rolling average has more than doubled in the last week. The average number of cases per day is now 1,937 per day compared to 834 cases a day a week ago.
Caroline Colijn said the new case numbers don’t capture the province’s entire pandemic picture, however, because B.C. has hit its testing capacity limits and younger, symptomatic people have been told not to come in for PCR testing.
“We won’t be seeing the rise in cases numbers that we would have seen if we did not hit that testing capacity,” explained the Canada 150 research chair in mathematics for evolution, infection and public health in an interview.
“Unfortunately it is going to be a struggle to interpret the data in the coming days and possibly coming weeks.”
An updated number of Omicron cases was not available Monday.
The weekend COVID-19 numbers include 3,181 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 1,482 new cases in the Vancouver Coastal Health area, 713 new cases in Interior Health, 174 new cases in Northern Health, and 737 new cases in Island Health.
There is also one new case in a British Columbian who resides outside of Canada.