Adrian Dix, Minister of Health, and Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer, today (Sept. 2) issued the following joint statement regarding updates on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) response in British Columbia.

Today, we are announcing 104 new cases, including six epi-linked cases, for a total of 5,952 cases in British Columbia.

There are 1,127 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, 2,786 people who are under active public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases, and 4,605 people who tested positive have recovered.

Currently, 33 individuals are hospitalized with COVID-19, 14 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people with COVID-19 are recovering at home in self-isolation.

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 1,974 cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 3,112 in the Fraser Health region, 178 in the Island Health region, 445 in the Interior Health region, 164 in the Northern Health region and 79 cases of people who reside outside of Canada.

There have been no new COVID-19 related deaths, for a total of 209 deaths in British Columbia. We offer our condolences to everyone who has lost their loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There has been one new health-care facility outbreak at Surrey Memorial Hospital and the outbreak at Langley Memorial Hospital has been declared over. In total, eight long-term care or assisted-living facilities and two acute-care facilities have active outbreaks.

There have been no new community outbreaks, although there continue to be community exposure events.

Alerts are posted on the BC Centre for Disease Control’s (BCCDC) website, as well as on health authorities’ websites, providing details on where the potential exposure occurred and what actions to take – whether you need to self-isolate or monitor for symptoms.

Getting back to work and back to school is also about getting back to the basics with our COVID-19 safety measures.

We need to redouble our efforts to ensure our layers of protection are always part of our daily routines – for everyone in our family. This will allow us to push our curve down once again.

Take some time to think about your personal circumstances and those of your family. Who may be vulnerable to severe illness and what are you doing to protect them? With each of us doing our part, we can protect our communities, our elders and our loved ones.

Let’s choose to keep our groups small. Let’s choose to be the person that stays home when we are ill and let’s choose to be safe each and every day while COVID-19 remains in our communities.

Lead image: Sandwich board sign at the Invermere Legion Market. Carrie Schafer/e-KNOW photo

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