BC announces 428 new COVID-19 cases, eight additional deaths

BC health officials said on Tuesday that 428 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the province, for a recorded total of 54,629 cases

In a written statement, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said that broken down by health region, this equates to 90 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 223 new cases in the Fraser Health region, nine in the Island Health region, 61 in the Interior Health region, 45 in the Northern Health region.

There are 6,472 active cases of COVID-19 in the province. There are 367 individuals currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 77 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.

Currently, 8,596 people are under active public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases

“There have been eight new COVID-19 related deaths, for a total of 954 deaths in British Columbia.

A total of 45,999 individuals who tested positive have now recovered.

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To date, 28,209 people have received a COVID-19 vaccine in British Columbia.

“While the focus is on first-priority populations in the next three months, as new vaccines are approved and additional supply becomes available, we will incorporate the additional doses into our distribution to enable as many people as possible to be immunized as soon as they can,” said Henry.

A public alert has also been issued for the Revelstoke region, where community transmission and new cases of COVID-19 have increased substantially in recent days.

“The alert is a caution for all of us to continue to follow public health guidelines and restrictions,” said Henry. “We were able to slow the increase of new cases in mid-December and we want to continue that trend, but the number of new cases and deaths across the province remains high.”