Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer, and Adrian Dix, Minister of Health, today (April 13) issued the following joint statement regarding updates on the COVID-19 response in British Columbia.

Today, we are reporting 873 new cases, for a total of 113,702 cases in British Columbia. Due to a delay in the Public Health Reporting Data Warehouse (PHRDW) lab system, these numbers are preliminary and may be adjusted once confirmed with PHRDW data.

There are 9,756 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, with 16,290 people under public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases. A further 102,268 people who tested positive have recovered.

Of the active cases, 377 individuals are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 116 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.

Since we last reported, we have had 218 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 512 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 43 in the Island Health region, 72 in the Interior Health region, 28 in the Northern Health region and no new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.

There have been two new COVID-19 related deaths, for a total of 1,515 deaths in British Columbia.

The outbreak at Chilliwack General Hospital is now over.

There are currently 5,221 confirmed COVID-19 cases that are variants of concern in our province. Of the total cases, 258 are active and the remaining people have recovered. This includes 3,627 cases of the B.1.1.7 (U.K.) variant, 65 cases of the B.1.351 (South Africa) variant and 1,529 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant. This data will be updated weekly and included in the BC Centre for Disease Control’s COVID-19 weekly surveillance report.

In B.C., 1,148,993 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered, 87,785 of which are second doses.

People 65 and older, Indigenous peoples 18 and over, and individuals who have received their ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ letter are now eligible to receive their vaccine. People 55 to 65 may also book appointments for the AstraZeneca vaccine at pharmacies throughout the province.

We are adapting our vaccine delivery in step with our supply and will continue to do that moving forward. If needed, we will pivot, pause or shift our delivery to maximize protection to as many people as possible.

Right now, the parallel worker program is focused on transmission hot spots – high-risk workplaces in our highest-risk communities. We are systematically working through the immunization of our first responders, school staff and child care workers in these communities, and in the coming weeks will expand into more communities as vaccine supplies allow.

We are also steadily progressing through our age-based program, because we know it is those who are older who are most likely to have severe illness requiring care in hospital.

Whether your appointment is next week or next month, the benefit for all of us is that with each person who receives their vaccine, we all have a little bit more protection.

This week is National Laboratory Week. It is our time to thank the many, many people who are working in our laboratories to support our pandemic response. Let’s show our appreciation by staying close to home as much as possible and doing all we can to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Lead image: COVID-19 information and requests on the door to a downtown Fernie business. Carrie Schafer/e-KNOW photo

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