Almost all new indoor COVID-19 cases are now the Delta variant – Kelowna News

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New cases of COVID-19 in the central Okanagan and elsewhere in the interior are now almost all Delta variant cases.

News The data from the BC Center for Disease Control shows that between July 25 and July 31, 99% of the 787 new cases indoors were the Delta variant. This is an increase from 89 percent of previous week.

Province-wide, 95% of 1,488 new cases during the same period were Delta variant cases, up from 61% the week before.

Northern Health Region has the lowest proportion of Delta variant cases, at 79%.

The Delta variant was first discovered in India in late 2020, and it has become the most transmissible variant of the COVID-19 virus discovered to date.

The variant has been one of the reasons for the widespread transmission of the virus in the central Okanagan in recent weeks. Between July 25 and July 31, 450 new cases were identified in the central Okanagan, representing 30% of all cases in British Columbia during this week.

And the most recent geographic data published by the BC CDC shows that the number of cases has continued to rise. Between July 30 and August 5, downtown Kelowna, Glenmore and Rutland had record average daily case rates, with 49, 50 and 51 daily infections per 100,000 people, respectively.

This equates to about 132 new infections last week in downtown Kelowna, 117 in Glenmore and 124 in Rutland.

The rest of the central Okanagan communities have also seen a high number of cases in recent days.

As a result, new COVID-19 restrictions were put in place in the central Okanagan on Friday, including restrictions on the size of gatherings and the reintroduction of some restrictions on restaurants.