Island Health saw no new confirmed COVID-19 cases for the second day in a row as B.C. health officials reported 122 new cases in the province on Wednesday.
Island Health has had 195 cases since the start of the pandemic. No new cases have been reported over the last 48 hours.
As of Sept. 16, there are 11 active cases in the health authority: seven on southern Vancouver Island and four on central Vancouver Island. There are no hospitalizations.
COVID-19 numbers in Island Health as of Sept. 16, 2020. (Island Health)
B.C. Minister of Health Adrian Dix and Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer, released Wednesday’s numbers in a statement, saying B.C. has now had a total of 7,498 cases since the start of the pandemic.
Five of the new cases are epidemiologically-linked, meaning people who were never tested but were presumed to have COVID-19 because they developed symptoms and were close contacts of a laboratory-confirmed case.
No new COVID-19 deaths were reported on Wednesday. B.C.’s COVID-19 death roll remains at 219.
There are 1,614 active cases of COVID-19 in the province (an increase of 24 from Sept 15), 2,966 people who are under active public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases (an decrease of 35 from Sept. 15) and 5,646 people who tested positive have recovered.
Sixty people with COVID-19 are in hospital in B.C. (a decrease of three from Sept. 15), 23 of whom are in intensive care (no change from Sept. 15).
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 195 cases in Island Health, 2,660 cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 3,835 in the Fraser Health region, 485 in the Interior Health region, 237 in the Northern Health region and 85 cases of people who reside outside of Canada (visitors and temporary foreign workers).
There are no new community outbreaks or healthcare outbreaks. Eleven long-term care or assisted-living facilities and three acute-care facilities have active outbreaks. They are:
- OPAL by Element assisted-living facility in Vancouver Coastal Health
- Point Grey Private Hospital long-term care facility in Vancouver Coastal Health
- Royal Arch Masonic Home long-term care facility (second outbreak) in Vancouver Coastal Health
- Bear Creek Villa independent-living facility in Fraser Health
- Cherington Place long-term care facility in Fraser Health
- Evergreen Hamlets long-term care facility in Fraser Health
- Kin Village assisted-living facility in Fraser Health
- Milieu Children and Family Services Society community-living facility in Fraser Health
- New Vista Care Home long-term care facility in Fraser Health
- Normanna long-term care facility in Fraser Health
- Rideau Retirement Centre independent-living facility in Fraser Health
Henry and Dix said beginning today (Sept. 16), the BC Centre for Disease Control website will also link to regional health authorities’ school notification pages, providing the date and type of notification (outbreak, cluster or exposure) for impacted schools. Island Health’s school notification page can be accessed here.
“As we work to support each other, one of the biggest concerns with COVID-19 is the unidentified spread of the virus in our communities. This is why getting tested as soon as you have symptoms is so important,” Dix and Henry said.
“With the knowledge of new cases or clusters, public health teams can quickly complete contact tracing, notify those who may be exposed and more importantly, contain the further spread.
“It doesn’t help to shame and blame those in our communities who have the virus, because it quite often discourages others from coming forward and getting tested, putting all of us at risk.
“Rather, we need to show compassion and care, not judgment, when there is a new case in our community.
“Large gatherings have been a steady source of transmission. However, many of the new cases we are seeing in the past weeks are from small gatherings where people see different groups of friends on different days – inadvertently spreading the virus to many people.
“Let’s not forget that if we are close enough, doing enough and with enough different people, the likelihood of transmitting the virus significantly goes up. That is why it is so important to make our social interactions a ‘small and safe six,’ keeping to our immediate households and the same close friends only.
“September is our month to get ready for the respiratory season, to hold steady with our layers of protection and go forward with the routines that will keep our communities and our loved ones safe.”
B.C. has posted detailed information about the geographic distribution of COVID-19 cases from January to July 2020. This map will be continually updated, according to B.C. health officials.
Geographic distribution of COVID-19 cases in B.C. from January to July 2020. (Province of BC)
Island Health’s COVID-19 data breaks down North, Central and South Island case counts and lists the number of days since any new lab-diagnosed cases. You can find the data here along with any public exposures.
To see B.C.’s COVID-19 numbers by day and health authority, along with testing numbers and recoveries, visit the B.C. COVID-19 dashboard. The numbers are updated at 4:30 p.m. PT each weekday.
To see a list of all provincial public COVID-19 exposures in the province, including links to exposures listed on health authority websites, visit the B.C. Centre for Disease Control website (CDC) here.
One of the latest public exposures is Air Canada flight 195 from Toronto to Victoria on Sept. 5. The affected rows are one through four but anyone on a domestic flight with a COVID-19 case should self-monitor for symptoms for 14 days, the BC CDC says.
The latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada as of 3:14 p.m. PDT on Sept. 16, 2020:
There are 139,747 confirmed cases in Canada (0 presumptive, 139,747 confirmed including 9,193 deaths, 122,448 resolved)
- Quebec: 65,857 confirmed (including 5,788 deaths, 57,804 resolved)
- Ontario: 45,383 confirmed (including 2,822 deaths, 40,245 resolved)
- Alberta: 16,128 confirmed (including 254 deaths, 14,379 resolved)
- British Columbia: 7,498 confirmed (including 219 deaths, 5,646 resolved)
- Saskatchewan: 1,751 confirmed (including 24 deaths, 1,620 resolved)
- Manitoba: 1,489 confirmed (including 16 deaths, 1,190 resolved)
- Nova Scotia: 1,086 confirmed (including 65 deaths, 1,020 resolved)
- Newfoundland and Labrador: 271 confirmed (including 3 deaths, 266 resolved)
- New Brunswick: 194 confirmed (including 2 deaths, 189 resolved)
- Prince Edward Island: 57 confirmed (including 56 resolved)
- Yukon: 15 confirmed (including 15 resolved)
- Repatriated Canadians: 13 confirmed (including 13 resolved)
- Northwest Territories: 5 confirmed (including 5 resolved)
- Nunavut: No confirmed cases
According to data collected by Johns Hopkins University and Medicine, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide is more than 29.6 million, with more than 937,000 deaths.
With files from The Canadian Press
Alexa Huffman
