Number of new COVID-19 cases in BC surges to 716

British Columbia health officials announced 716 new test-positive COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the total number of recorded cases in the province to 93,969.

In a joint written statement, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix said that broken down by health region, this equates to 230 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 383 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 21 in the Island Health region, 38 in the Interior Health region, 42 in the Northern Health region, and two new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.

• See also: 
  • Over 1,400 laid-off BC tourism and hospitality workers to fill non-clinical roles in vaccination clinics
  • BC health officials address early COVID-19 bookings for some households

There are 5,573 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, with 9,696 people under public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases.

Of the active cases, 303 individuals are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 85 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.

There have been three new COVID-19-related deaths, for a total of 1,441 deaths in British Columbia.

There have been 71 new confirmed COVID-19 cases that are variants of concern in the province, for a total of 1,581 cases. Of the total cases, 148 are active and the remaining people have recovered. This includes 1,397 cases of the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant, 44 cases of the B.1.351 (South Africa) variant and 140 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant.

To date, 582,634 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in BC, 87,180 of which are second doses.

A further 86,857 people who tested positive have recovered.