British Columbia’s provincial health officer began her update on COVID-19 by paying tribute to the 215 children whose remains were discovered at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops.
Dr. Bonnie Henry says there are no words that could do justice to the children who died scared and alone, far from home and their families as part of a system that tried to extinguish Indigenous people through ideologies rooted in “settler supremacy.”
Henry transitioned into the province’s path forward with COVID-19 by highlighting that over three million first doses of a vaccine have been administered, amounting to 66 per cent of the population aged 12 and over.
The province recorded 708 cases over the last three days, along with 11 deaths for a total of 1,703 fatalities from the virus.
From Friday to Saturday 258 new cases were reported, Saturday to Sunday 238 cases were reported, and Sunday to Monday 212 cases were added to the provincial total.
The number of confirmed cases in B.C. climbs to 144,289 while the province’s death toll now stands at 1,703.
Of the new cases, 140 were recorded in Vancouver Coastal Health, 394 were in Fraser Health, 18 in Island Health, 113 in Interior Health, and 42 in Northern Health.
There are currently 2,953 active cases in the province, 249 people in hospital — 78 of whom are in intensive care.
Henry says a third B.C. resident, a man in his 30s, has experienced a blood clot related to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and that she’ll provide vaccine options later this week for those who have already received a first shot of that product.
She says that while case counts are declining, everyone is urged to keep taking precautions against the virus because only about 180,000 B.C. residents have received a second dose of vaccine.
Graham Cox
