There have been 24 new cases of COVID-19 reported in the past two days in B.C., as well as three new deaths.

Fifteen of those cases were from yesterday and there have been nine new cases today. There were no new cases in Interior Health in the past two days.

Of the three latest deaths, two were in long-term care homes and one was a patient being treated in hospital.

Province-wide, there are now 160 active cases, and 17 people in hospital with the virus. There are two people in intensive care.

There have now been 2,940 reported cases and 173 deaths, and 2,603 reported cases are now recovered (88.5 per cent).

When it comes to travel, BC’s Health Minister applauds a move by the feds to extend its order of quarantine for anyone coming into Canada until the end of August. Adrian Dix says that goes for all visitors, not just those from the US.

He adds that there is a separate agreement with the states that gets reviewed monthly and he advocates for that to be extended for another month as it is set to expire on July 21st. “Notwithstanding the real impacts of those controls at the border and those controls internationally, they remain absolutely essential to our efforts to control COVID-19 in BC.”

Provincial Health Officer Dr Bonnie Henry shares in Minister Dix’s call to see the ban on non-essential travel restrictions to and from the U-S remain in place for at least another month.

Henry says she would be in full support of an extension and adds that there are great concerns about what is happening south of the border. “But right now, it is a challenging situation in Washington state where they have been actively working for, as we know, a long time to control the outbreak there. I think it really speaks to, once you get a level of transmission in the community with this virus it is so, so challenging to get ahead of it.”