New Vancouver Island COVID-19 cases climb over 50 mark, 663 total across province

British Columbia health officials are reporting 663 new cases of COVID-19 for the entire province on Friday, with 54 linked to the Island Health region.

Within the Island Health region, there is currently a total of 391 active COVID-19 cases.

In a statement released to the media, Dr. Bonnie Henry says that 129 are in hospital with 59 people in critical care as a result of the virus. There are currently 6,345 active cases in British Columbia.

Since Thursday’s numbers, there have been 135 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 162 in the Fraser Health region, 54 in the Island Health region, 274 in the Interior Health region, 38 in the Northern Health region and no cases for people who reside outside of Canada.

There was one additional death related to the virus on Thursday. This brings the provincial death total over the course of the pandemic to 1,785.

Also as of Thursday, the total number of cases in British Columbia over the course of the pandemic has reached 158,919.

As for the Province’s total vaccination program, B.C. has now administered a total of 7,296,096 doses of COVID-19 immunizations.

Health officials say that equates to first doses for 83.8 per cent of all eligible adult British Columbians and 83.0 per cent of all eligible people 12 and older.

In addition, 75.5 per cent of all eligible adults have received their second dose, totalling 3,266,877 residents.

On Friday, B.C. health officials also announced that they would be expanding COVID-19 restrictions across the Interior Health region as the case count leaps in the area.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says restrictions currently in place in the central Okanagan, such as mandatory mask-wearing and reduced limits on indoor and outdoor events, will be expanded across the region in an effort to limit the rise in COVID-19 cases.

The province has seen a leap in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, with many occurring in the Interior Health region, which Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix attributed to lower vaccination rates.

Island Health

Within the Island Health, there are 325 active cases overall — 40 in the North Island, 115 in the Central region, and 170 in South Island.

There are currently eight people in hosptial, five of whom are in critical care.

Over the past 24 hours, there were 2,512 doses of vaccine administered on Vancouver Island. Of those doses, 13 were AstraZeneca, 1,307 were Moderna and 1,192 doses were Pfizer. There were also 1,044 new tests for COVID-19 performed over the same time period.

A total of 1,218,676 doses of vaccine — 579,866 are second doses — have been administered on Vancouver Island. This includes 32,761 doses of AstraZeneca, 303,335 doses of Moderna and 882,580 doses of Pfizer.

Since the pandemic began, there have been 5,853 cases reported, 42 deaths, 268 total hospitalizations, and 5,390 recoveries recorded on Vancouver Island.

Editor’s note: The BCCDC lists the active case count for Vancouver Island at 391, which is 66 more active cases than what Island Health has reported. There are often discrepancies between the figures due to “differences in reporting” timeframes between the two agencies.

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