British Columbia health officials are reporting 500 new cases and five deaths from COVID-19 since their last update on Monday.
The number of confirmed cases in B.C. climbs to 210,203 while the province’s death toll now stands at 2,223.
Of the new cases, 76 were reported in the Island Health region, which currently has an active case count of 613, according to the BCCDC.
Three of the five deaths due to COVID-19 were recorded in the region, bringing Island Health’s death toll to 103 since the start of the pandemic.
There are currently 4,301 active cases in the province and 426 people in hospital — 124 of whom are in intensive care.
A total of 203,375 people in B.C. have recovered from COVID-19 while 8,361,935 doses of vaccine have been administered province-wide.
Of note, the Ministry of Health did not provide its own daily COVID-19 update as of 5:45 p.m. Tuesday.
Island Health, whose numbers can differ from provincial reporting due to differences in reporting timeframes, reported 489 active cases in the region Tuesday.
Of those, 132 were on the South Island, 275 were on the Central Island and 75 were on the North Island.
Number of vaccinated health care workers rises
The province also confirmed that 1,548 health care workers were vaccinated since last week.
There are now 3,071 unvaccinated health care workers on leave in B.C.
That includes:
- 1,032 casuals
- 989 full time
- 819 part time
- 16 not identified
By job category, that includes:
- Emergency/critical care: 1,445 total (28 unvaccinated) – 2%
- General medicine: 5445 total (105 not vaccinated) – 2%
- Healthcare assistants/care aides: 7,548 (247 unvaccinated – 3%)
- Internal: 1,703 (19 unvaccinated) – 1%
- Nursing: 40,181 (906 unvaccinated) – 2%
- Paramedics: 2,837 (86 unvaccinated) – 3%
- Resident doctors: 1,366 (10 unvaccinated) – less than 1%
- Specialized surgical: 1,422 (27 unvaccinated) – 2%
The number of workers getting vaccinated is rising rapidly, and soon, public health will have another tool to try to boost those numbers even higher with the introduction of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which will arrive in B.C. next week.
CHEK News
