New COVID-19 records set as B.C. easily surpasses 5K total cases, 269 reported over three-day period

More records broken and new milestones to take note.

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry returned to the podium today (Aug. 24) after a week off, but the news remained unsettling as B.C. reported 269 positive COVID-19 cases from the last three days, surpassing a new plateau to 5,184 positive tests since January.

In Northern Health, five more cases were found over the weekend, bringing the authority's total to 127 since the virus reached the region in March.

The three-day period, as reported by Dr. Henry, is as follows:

109 = Friday-Saturday (new single-day record)
81 = Saturday-Sunday
79 = Sunday-Monday

A new active-case record has also been set at 913, that's 89 more than the previous feat set on Friday (Aug. 21) at 824.

Among them includes 18 cases hospitalized, five in critical care and 4,068 recoveries (78 per cent).

One more person died from the virus in the last 72 hours in the Fraser Health region, increasing the fatality rate to 203.

“Despite the recent outbreaks and clusters that we have seen in the past week, and the rising case numbers, we still have low undetected transmission in our province,” said Dr. Henry at her news conference as B.C. has ramped up testing to 4,000 to 5,000 tests per day,

“We are able to find and connect most people who have this disease.”

Dr. Henry also said the test-positive results remain "relatively low," and she would be worried if the those numbers started climbing.

"Right now, we are staying within the range of where we need to be," she added, while also suggesting that everyone has to learn to live with the reality of the virus and not expect it to suddenly disappear.

"There are many more months of this to come," she said.

While Henry said that there has been a recent increase in infections among people in their 50s and 60s, the vast majority of the new cases are in younger people, and many of the sources of transmission is larger gatherings and private parties.

Last week, B.C. introduced new fines for individuals who hold large parties, and some hosts have already received $2,000 fines for hosting parties that breach the rules around physical distancing and limiting the number of people in a confined space.

"I think that it's the right thing to do and I think it's being used in the right way -- very judiciously," Henry said.

"We want to do it in a progressive way for those who really are breaking the rules intentionally."

Northern Health's five new cases today ties the region's third-highest single-day case count previously hit on April 18.

It's also recorded zero deaths during the pandemic.

On Friday, the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) released an updated geographic distribution of COVID-19 by Health Service Delivery Area of Case Residence.

The numbers, as of Aug. 20, were as follows:

JAN. 1 to AUG. 20