After days of people sharing holiday photos, some clearly depicting travel and gatherings, B.C.’s provincial health officer asked British Columbians to mark the new year without socializing, reminding everyone to mix only with household members.
“Toast the year to come and continue your cultural, your family tradition,” Dr. Bonnie Henry said. “But we must do this without the usual post-party or celebration.
“With that in mind, I want to remind people that our current events and gatherings orders means that any gathering in your home or any social gathering is not allowed at this time.”
There have been 2,206 new cases of COVID-19 over the past five days, bringing the number of known active cases to 7,580. Of those, 373 are in hospital include 80 in intensive or critical care. Another 9,414 people are under public health monitoring.
Forty-four of the new cases were in the Island Health region, which has 76 active cases and seven people in hospital.
Seventy-seven additional deaths have been linked to the virus. None of the new deaths were on the Island, which has recorded 11 deaths due to COVID-19.
So far, Island Health is the only B.C. health authority that has reported a case of a new, highly transmissible COVID-19 variant strain seen in the United Kingdom.
The person tested positive for COVID-19 on Dec. 19 after flying from London to Vancouver four days earlier. Their test sample was sent to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control on the Lower Mainland for whole genome sequencing and on Dec. 26 it was identified as positive for the U.K. variant.
“So far, this is the first case that has shown up and out of caution, of course, we are making sure that this person remains in quarantine until their symptoms resolved,” Henry said.
There are other test samples from people who travelled from the U.K. before travel restrictions were put in place and those will also undergo testing for the variant strain, she said. “And it may well be that we will identify additional people who have this variant who are here in B.C. now.”
The new variant doesn’t seem to cause more severe illness or interfere with COVID-19 test results or vaccines, Henry said, though it does seem to cause more infection.
The mutated virus binds more easily to receptors in the back of a person’s throat making it easier “for someone to be infected with a smaller dose of the virus,” she said. “That is why we are watching this very carefully and why we support right now trying to slow down any entry of that virus into the country with the current travel ban.”
The variant has also been found in Ontario and Alberta, and on Tuesday it was detected in the U.S. for the first time.
Because the variant is potentially more infectious, “it means we have to be even more adherent,” Henry said.
The most important things are following restrictions and orders and practising infection prevention by washing hands regularly, isolating when unwell, physically distancing, wearing masks in public, and keeping gatherings small.
There have been 50,815 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in B.C. since the beginning of the pandemic. Of those, 41,175 people have recovered and 882 have died.
