British Columbia health officials are reporting 2,046 new cases of COVID-19 for the entire province on Thursday with a record-setting 248 linked to the Island Health region.
Within the Island Health region, there is currently a total of 1,267 active COVID-19 cases.
As far as the Omicron variant goes, Island Health is currently reporting 235 cases total within the health authority as of Thursday, Dec. 23.
In total across the province, there have been 975 Omicron cases reported with 221 in Fraser Health, 496 in Vancouver Coastal, 19 in Interior Health and four in Northern Health.
In a statement released to the media, Dr. Bonnie Henry says that 195 are in hospital with 75 people in critical care as a result of the virus. There are currently 8,739 active cases in British Columbia, which is nearly triple the amount it was seven days ago.
Since Wednesday’s numbers, there have been 880 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 741 in the Fraser Health region, 248 in the Island Health region, 123 in the Interior Health region, 53 in the Northern Health region and one new cases for people who reside outside of Canada.
There has been one additional death related to the virus in the past 24 hours, located in the Island Health region. That brings the provincial death total over the course of the pandemic to 2,410.
Also as of Thursday, the total number of cases in British Columbia over the course of the pandemic has reached 233,217.
As for the Province’s total vaccination program, B.C. has now administered a total of 9,248,433 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 3,869,327 residents and 18 per cent of the population has received a third dose (784,714 people).
From Dec. 15-21, people not fully vaccinated accounted for 24.8 per cent of cases and from Dec. 8-21 they accounted for 68.6% of hospitalizations.
Graham Cox
