The province’s top doctor says that the number of tests being done in B.C. is down, but the capacity has grown.

Dr Bonnie Henry says the focus remains on people at higher risk and she adds that there are a few reasons as to why the number of tests is on the decline.

“Part of them is that we’re not seeing as much respiratory infections in the community right now. When we were doing broad testing early on, our positivity rate was less than one per cent, it was around one per cent. It’s now quite a bit higher, it’s around six or seven per cent,” she said.

“We’re starting to increase the number of people that we’re testing in the community and for physicians to be able to test more broadly now as well. One, because we have the capacity, but also because as influenza goes away anybody with a respiratory illness now has a higher probability of having COVID-19.”

Henry adds that the strategy for testing will change as the epidemiology of what is happening in communities across B.C. is changing.

“We do expect that our testing numbers will go up again in the near future and we’ll be looking again at making sure that we’re identifying any clusters in our communities,” Henry noted.

“We’re still doing that and particularly in areas of the province where there has not been a lot of community transmission, that has been the focus, but I expect we’ll increase in the coming weeks.”

As of Thursday afternoon, there were 1,336 cases of COVID-19 in B.C. and 48 deaths.