There were fewer visits to the emergency room in Kamloops while a COVID-19 outbreak was going on at Royal Inland Hospital, although health officials aren’t sure if the those are linked.

Interior Health says there were 161 emergency room visits in January and 153 visits in February; those numbers are down from 213 visits in January of 2020 and 219 visits in February of 2020.

The number of ER visits in Kamloops this past January and February, respectively, were the lowest in the past five years.

While acknowledging a drop in ER visits during the outbreak at the hospital, Interior Health tells NL News in an email that there’s no firm data to suggest the decline was directly related to the ongoing virus outbreak.

The COVID-19 pandemic also did not start until March of 2021, and at that point emergency room visits dropped for a variety of reasons.

The outbreak at RIH lasted from Jan. 22 to Feb. 22 and saw 105 total cases of COVID-19, including 69 staff and 36 patients. Six patients also died from the virus in that time.