B.C. recorded 1,667 new cases of COVID-19 over the weekend and 41 deaths, including one linked to an outbreak at the Saanich Peninsula Hospital, health officials say.
“We’re starting to see a levelling off of our COVID-19 curve in B.C., and that is good news,” said provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry on Monday.
There are now 9,718 active cases in the province and 341 people in hospital, including 80 in intensive or critical care. An additional 9,651 people are being monitored for the disease.
Twenty-one new confirmed cases were reported in the Island Health region, while Fraser Health had 1,084, Vancouver Coastal 283, Interior Health 189, and Northern Health 90.
The death at Saanich Peninsula Hospital is the fourth connected to the outbreak there. As of Friday, 11 patients and 11 staff had tested positive for COVID-19.
Henry made a public commitment to keep her celebrations small this holiday season to protect her friends and community and asked all British Columbians to do the same.
She said the variant strain of COVID-19 that has prompted a lockdown in the United Kingdom and the suspension of flights from the U.K. into Canada has not yet been detected in Canada.
More than 3,600 health care workers have been immunized in the province, Henry said. All health regions have received the vaccine and health teams “are preparing, even as we speak, to get immunization clinics underway in the coming days,” she said.
To date 47,067 people have tested positive with COVID-19 in B.C. Of those 35,455 have recovered. There have been 713 deaths linked to the novel coronavirus.
