Health officials have announced 20 new cases of COVID-19 today in B.C.

The province is also now reporting that 51 people who tested positive are not residents of Canada, and those cases have been removed from our provincial tally.

That means 2,977 people have tested positive in B.C. for the virus, and now 201 in the Interior Health region.

There are 175 active cases across B.C., which is 13 more than yesterday. Seventeen people are in hospital with the virus, which is the same as Thursday, and four people are in intensive care.

There were zero new deaths today from the virus in B.C. It has killed 186 people in the province, including two in the Interior Health Authority.

When it comes to keeping the spread of the virus down, Provincial Health Officer say we need to keep the reproduction rate of COVID-19 to a minimum.

Modelling released two weeks ago showed that the reproduction rate in BC,  which indicates the number of people one case will transmit to,  had dropped from just under three in March, to one. Henry says she wants to see it get below that.

“We know as well what we call the reproductive number, we want it to be under one which means we don’t want people to be transmitting to others.”

Henry says we don’t want people to be transmitting the virus to others and to do that we need to continue keeping our social bubbles tight.

“We’ve talked about with the modelling that we’re somewhere around 65 per cent of where we used to be in term of contacts. And that’s the balance we need to keep to make sure we can control this virus and make sure it’s not going to spread rapidly in our communities affecting our families, affecting our province.”

Henry continues to stress that as the understanding of the virus evolves so to will the health recommendations.