British Columbia health officials are reporting another record-setting day Friday with 2,441 new cases of COVID-19 across the entire province with 219 linked to the Island Health region.
It marks the fourth day in a row that health officials reported a record number of daily cases in British Columbia.
Within the Island Health region, there is currently a total of 1,274 active COVID-19 cases.
As far as the Omicron variant goes, Island Health is currently reporting 347 cases total within the health authority as of Friday, Dec. 24.
In total across the province, there have been 1,613 Omicron cases reported with 263 in Fraser Health, 959 in Vancouver Coastal, 40 in Interior Health and four in Northern Health.
In a statement released to the media, Dr. Bonnie Henry says that 192 are in hospital with 71 people in critical care as a result of the virus. There are currently 10,415 active cases in British Columbia, which is more than triple the amount it was eight days ago.
Since Thursday’s numbers, there have been 967 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 1,001 in the Fraser Health region, 219 in the Island Health region, 188 in the Interior Health region, 66 in the Northern Health region and no new cases for people who reside outside of Canada.
There have been four additional deaths related to the virus in the past 24 hours, none of which are located in the Island Health region. That brings the provincial death total over the course of the pandemic to 2,414.
Also as of Friday, the total number of cases in British Columbia over the course of the pandemic has reached 235,658.
As for the Province’s total vaccination program, B.C. has now administered a total of 9,276,592 doses of COVID-19 immunizations.
Health officials say that equates to first doses for 92.2 per cent of all eligible adult British Columbians and 91.8 per cent of all eligible people 12 and older.
In addition, 89.5 per cent of all eligible adults have received their second dose, totalling 3,870,981 residents and 19 per cent of the population has received a third dose (806,246 people).
For the entire province, 87.8 per cent (4,377,551) of eligible people five and older in B.C. have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
From Dec. 16-22, people not fully vaccinated accounted for 21.9% of cases and from Dec. 9-22 they accounted for 67.2% of hospitalizations.
As far as reporting goes, the Province says the Ministry of Health will provide preliminary COVID-19 case counts on Dec. 27 and 28 and return to regular reporting on Wednesday, Dec. 29.
Graham Cox
