The Skeena
Terrace this week has the dubious honor of most new COVID cases in the Skeena Region, adding 44 confirmed infections during the last reporting period.
New data from the B.C. Centre For Disease Control shows that Nisga’a area is in second place, with 29 new COVID cases confirmed between January 3 to 9. Calling the coronavirus an “imminent threat,” the Nisga’a Lisims Government executive declared a state of local emergency last week, as Skeena Strong reported.
The numbers were comparably high in Smithers, which saw a 25 case rise according to the BC CDC. Kitimat, which in previous months has been dealing with outbreaks related to the LNG Canada worksite, saw only 11 new cases. And Prince Rupert didn’t see any at all during the recent period.
The Smithers’ numbers are particularly worrying, reports the Interior News, because they represent “a very high daily infection rate of 15.1 to 20 per 100,000 population, a measure the B.C. Centre for Disease Control uses to allow comparison between areas with different population densities.”
The newspaper explained that “while Northwest numbers are increasing, the province as a whole is seeing a downward trajectory in the curve.”
There have been nearly 61,500 cases overall in B.C. since the pandemic started and nearly 3,000 of those have been in the Northern Health region.
