B.C. is reporting 724 new COVID-19 cases today, 271 of which were in Interior Health.

There are now 5,640 active cases of the virus in the province, an increase of 284 cases from yesterday. In Interior Health, there was an increase in 103 active cases, now at 2,014 as of Thursday’s update.

Elsewhere, there were 185 new cases in Fraser Health (1,319 active), 142 in Vancouver Coastal Health (1,432 active), 64 in Island Health (502 active), and 62 in Northern Health (361 active). There were no new cases in people who live outside of Canada, with 12 such cases active.

Active cases have increased in all five health authorities with 149 people now in hospital with COVID-19, 83 in intensive care. Hospitalizations are up by 10, while the number of people in ICU is up by eight from Wednesday’s update.

There were two more deaths reported in Interior Health taking the provincial COVID-19 death toll to 1,804 people.

Between August 11 and 24, health officials say people who are not fully vaccinated accounted for 82.4 per cent of all COVID cases in B.C. and 86.4 per cent of hospitalizations.

They say from August 18 to 24 there were 4,413 COVID cases reported with 70.9 per cent (3,131) in unvaccinated people. Another 11.5 per cent (509) were in partially vaccinated people, and 17.5 per cent (773) in fully vaccinated people.

In that same timeframe, there have been 199.5 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 unvaccinated people. That drops to 111.9 cases per 100,000 people who are partially vaccinated and just 24.6 cases per 100,000 people who are fully vaccinated.

When it comes to hospitalizations in the two week period from August 11 to 24, 78.9 per cent of the 199 people hospitalized (157) were unvaccinated, while 7.5 per cent (15) were partially vaccinated people, and the remaining 13.6 per cent (27) were fully vaccinated people.

On the vaccine front, there are now 83.7 per cent of eligible people over the age of 12 (3,878,423) who have gotten one dose of a COVID vaccine, while 75.6 per cent of people (3,504,402) who are fully vaccinated. That is an increase of 9,094 first doses and 11,283 people who are fully vaccinated compared to yesterday’s update.

Since December 2020, the Province has administered 7,390,103 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.

Yesterday, the government said there was a significant increase in the number of vaccine registrations and bookings for first doses in the days after the COVID-19 vaccine card program was announced.