Despite easing public health restrictions across B.C. and Canada, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to kill.
The B.C. Ministry of Health reported a new COVID-related death in the Northern Health region on Tuesday, bringing the region’s death toll from the pandemic up to 327.
As of Tuesday, there were 21 people hospitalized in the Northern Health region with COVID-19, including four in critical care, the B.C. Centre for Disease Control reported.
The B.C. CDC reported 42 new cases of COVID-19 in the north on Tuesday. The province no longer reports the number of active cases.
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been a total of 29,346 cases of COVID-19 reported in the Northern Health region.
As of Tuesday, 90.8 per cent of eligible British Columbians (ages five and older) have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, and 87.3 per cent had received two doses. In addition, 57.5 per cent of British Columbians ages 12 and older had received a booster dose.
As of March 24, 87 per cent of people aged five and older in the Prince George local health area had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
A total of 11.48 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in B.C., including 527,404 in the Northern Health region.
Between March 21 and March 27, people not fully vaccinated accounted for 16.5 per cent of new COVID-19 cases, and from March 14 to March 27 they accounted for 22.3 per cent of COVID-related hospitalizations, the Ministry of Health reported.
During those periods, the unvaccinated were more than twice as likely to test positive for COVID as fully-vaccinated people (65.7 cases per 100,000 unvaccinated people vs. 27 cases per 100,000 vaccinated people) and more than three times as likely to be hospitalized (17.5 hospitalizations per 100,000 unvaccinated people vs. 5.1 hospitalizations per 100,000 vaccinated people).
