Chief provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry provides an update on COVID-19 on April 2, 2020.
Image Credit: Province of British Columbia
April 13, 2021 - 4:45 PM
Another 873 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in B.C. and two more people have died, while the number of patients hospitalized reached an all-time high, health officials said today.
With these new cases, there have been 113,702 cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, and 9,756 of the cases are active. Additionally, 377 people are now hospitalized with COVID-19, with 116 of whom in intensive care, Health Minister Adrian Dix and provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said in a joint statement issued today, April 13.
Yesterday, Minister Dix said hospitals had the capacity for this surge in cases.
Variants of concern are currently growing at a strong pace. There are currently 5,221 confirmed COVID-19 cases that are variants of concern in our province. Of the total cases, 258 are active and the remaining people have recovered. This includes 3,627 cases of the B.1.1.7 (U.K.) variant, 65 cases of the B.1.351 (South Africa) variant and 1,529 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant. This data will be updated weekly and included in the BC Centre for Disease Control's COVID-19 weekly surveillance report.
In B.C., 1,148,993 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered, 87,785 of which are second doses.
People 65 and older, Indigenous peoples 18 and over, and individuals who have received their 'clinically extremely vulnerable' letter are now eligible to receive their vaccine. People 55 to 65 may also book appointments for the AstraZeneca vaccine at pharmacies throughout the province.
"We are adapting our vaccine delivery in step with our suppliers and will continue to do that moving forward. If needed, we will pivot, pause or shift our delivery to maximize protection to as many people as possible," Dr. Henry and Dix said.
"Right now, the parallel worker program is focused on transmission hot spots - high-risk workplaces in our highest-risk communities. We are systematically working through the immunization of our first responders, school staff and child care workers in these communities, and in the coming weeks will expand into more communities as vaccine supplies allow."
There are 218 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 512 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 43 in the Island Health region, 72 in the Interior Health region, 28 in the Northern Health region and no new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.
The COVID-19 death toll is now at 1,515 in British Columbia.
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