BC hits highest one-day number of new COVID-19 cases this year with 800

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry (Gov BC/Flickr)

British Columbia health officials announced 800 new test-positive COVID-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the total number of recorded cases in the province to 94,769, and marking the highest one-day case increase this year.

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 264 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 381 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 45 in the Island Health region, 50 in the Interior Health region, 58 in the Northern Health region, and two new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.

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There are 5,856 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, with 9,964 people under public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases.

Of the active cases, 306 individuals are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 79 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.

There have been five new COVID-19-related deaths, for a total of 1,446 deaths in British Columbia.

There have been 191 new confirmed COVID-19 cases that are variants of concern in the province, for a total of 1,772 cases. Of the total cases, 215 are active and the remaining people have recovered. This includes 1,549 cases of the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant, 47 cases of the B.1.351 (South Africa) variant and 176 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant.

A further 87,351 people who tested positive have recovered.

To date, 610,671 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in BC, 87,212 of which are second doses. Vaccine appointment bookings are now open for people 75 or older, and Indigenous peoples over age 55.

“We have also seen a notable spike in the number of new cases, especially amongst those 19 to 39 years of age,” the statement said. “This tells us some people are taking on more risk for themselves and their loved ones than what is safe right now.”

And until everyone “has been protected with immunization, our protective layers must be the first and last thing we think about – whether at home, work, school or elsewhere.”