Island sees record number of new COVID-19 cases as B.C. adds more than 2,000 in a day

For the third straight day, the B.C. government has announced a record number of new cases of COVID-19.

Thursday's update added 2,046 more infections to the provincial total, as well as one related death.

On Vancouver Island, a record 248 new cases were confirmed in the past 24 hours, and the one death that occurred province-wide was in Island Health.

Since the pandemic began, 2,410 people have died of COVID-19 in B.C., including 139 in Island Health.

The latest cases push the province's rolling seven-day average for new cases to 1,167, the highest it's ever been.

Across the province, there are 8,739 active cases of COVID-19, a total that includes 1,267 in Island Health.

The health authority provided the locations of 884 active cases on Thursday, including 500 in the South Island, 228 in the Central Island and 156 in the North Island.

There are 195 people battling the coronavirus in B.C. hospitals, including 75 who are in intensive care units. On the island, hospitalizations increased to 41 on Thursday - up from 38 on Wednesday - and ICU admissions rose from 15 to 18.

B.C.'s surge in cases is being driven by the Omicron variant, which is rapidly replacing the Delta variant as the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the province.

As of Thursday, there were 975 confirmed Omicron infections province-wide, up from 756 in the last update on Tuesday.

Island Health has the second-largest share of confirmed Omicron cases among B.C.'s five regional health authorities. There were 235 cases of Omicron in Island Health Thursday, compared to 496 in Vancouver Coastal Health, 221 in Fraser Health, 19 in Interior Health and four in Northern Health.

Most of the new cases B.C. has been seeing during the recent surge have been among people who are vaccinated against COVID-19. Those who had received two shots accounted for 75.2 per cent of new infections between Dec. 15 and 21.

Hospitalizations continue to be mostly among the unvaccinated, however. Between Dec. 8 and 21, 66.3 per cent of new hospitalizations were among unvaccinated people.

As of Thursday, 87.7 per cent of eligible B.C. residents had received at least a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 82.7 per cent had received two shots. Third doses had been administered to approximately 17 per cent of those eligible for them.