Photo: BC CDC

While confirmed cases of COVID-19 have continued to sharply rise across British Columbia, new cases in the Okanagan have been heading in the right direction in recent weeks.

New data released by the BC Centre for Disease Control Thursday shows that in the past two weeks, the Okanagan has had 21 of the province's 637 new cases of the virus.

This is in stark contrast to last month, when the Okanagan had 107 of B.C.'s 340 new cases between July 10 and 23. That spike in cases was linked to multiple exposure events in Kelowna over the Canada Day long weekend, largely stemming from a single group of tourists who attended several private parties.

While the province's daily COVID-19 updates show new numbers by health authority, data broken down by the smaller Health Service Delivery Area, like the Okanagan, are released monthly.

Over the past two weeks, the bulk of B.C.'s new cases have come from the Fraser South Health Service Delivery Area, with 205 new cases, and the Vancouver area with 142 cases.

Province-wide, new cases have continued to rise, with 393 new cases in the past week alone. This is a 36 per cent increase from the previous week's new cases.

While the Interior Health region was seeing a large percentage of the new cases back in July, this past week saw 90 per cent of the new cases coming from the Fraser and Vancouver Coastal health regions.

Despite the new cases, new deaths and hospitalizations related to COVID-19 remain low. As of Thursday, there were 578 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, with nine people of these people being treated in hospital. The Interior Health region currently has 13 active cases, with two hospitalizations.

The BC CDC says these low hospitalization numbers relative to increasing case counts is due to the growing number of cases in younger people, particularly between 20 and 39 years old.