BC health officials to give live COVID-19 update on Thursday afternoon

Health officials in British Columbia will be providing a live update on COVID-19 cases and vaccinations on Thursday afternoon.

At 2 pm, a press conference will take place with Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix.

On Wednesday, the province announced 997 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of recorded cases in BC to 106,985.

There are 8,728 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, with 14,602 people under public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases.

Of the active cases, 330 individuals are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 105 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people with COVID-19 are recovering at home in self-isolation.

There have been two new COVID-19-related deaths, for a total of 1,491 deaths in British Columbia.

• See also: 
  • “We need the province’s help”: Whistler mayor calling for community COVID-19 vaccination
  • Delay in shutting down restaurants defying health orders “a confusing mess”
  • Closing BC schools would lead to higher COVID-19 cases: Henry

There are currently 3,766 confirmed COVID-19 cases that are variants of concern in the province. Additional whole genome sequencing has not been completed since the last report.

Of the total cases, 266 are active and the remaining people have recovered. This includes 2,837 cases of the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant, 51 cases of the B.1.351 (South Africa) variant and 878 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant.

To date, 946,096 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in BC, 87,504 of which are second doses.

A total of 96,626 people who tested positive for the virus have now recovered.

Today’s press conference can be streamed live on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.