New BC COVID-19 cases top 900 for the first time since November

British Columbia health officials announced 908 new test-positive COVID-19 cases on Friday, bringing the total number of recorded cases in the province to 95,667 and marking the highest one-day case increase since November of last 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 294 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 438 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 55 in the Island Health region, 43 in the Interior Health region, 78 in the Northern Health region, and no new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.

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There are 6,245 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, with 9,996 people under public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases.

Of the active cases, 294 individuals are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 81 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 1,449 deaths in British Columbia.

There have been 140 new confirmed COVID-19 cases that are variants of concern in the province, for a total of 1,912 cases. Of the total cases, 258 are active and the remaining people have recovered. This includes 1,666 cases of the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant, 47 cases of the B.1.351 (South Africa) variant and 199 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant.

A further 87,866 people who tested positive have recovered, and to date, 637,856 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in BC, 87,233 of which are second doses.