The COVID-19 pandemic claimed another life in the Northern Health region.
On Thursday, the B.C. Ministry of Health reported five new COVID-related deaths in the province – one in the north, three in the Fraser Health region and one on Vancouver Island. The new deaths bring the province’s death toll from the pandemic to 1,847 – including 162 residents of the Northern Health region.
The Ministry of Health reported 98 new cases of COVID-19 in the Northern Health region on Thursday. The number of active cases in the region grew from 721 on Wednesday to 752 on Thursday.
Thirty-two people in the Northern Health region were hospitalized with COVID-19, including 12 in critical care, according to information released by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
Northern Health is continuing to monitor active outbreaks at the Jubilee Lodge long-term care facility in Prince George and Fort St. John Hospital.
As of Thursday, 85.3 per cent of eligible British Columbians (those aged 12 and older) had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 77.8 per cent were fully vaccinated. A total of 7.57 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in B.C., including 334,941 doses in the Northern Health region, the B.C. CDC reported.
From Sept. 1 to Sept. 7, 70.2 per cent (301.4 per 100,000 people) of new COVID-19 cases reported in the province were in unvaccinated people. A further 8.4 per cent (84.8 per 100,000 people) of cases were in people who are partially vaccinated and 21.4 per cent (26 per 100,000 people) were in fully vaccinated people, according to Ministry of Health data.
Between Aug. 25 and Sept. 7, 80.5 per cent (37.1 per 100,000 people) of people hospitalized with COVID-19 were unvaccinated. During that same period, only 5.8 per cent (6.8 per 100,000 people) of people hospitalized with COVID-19 were partially vaccinated and 13.7 per cent (1.1 per 100,000 people) were fully vaccinated.
Based on those numbers, unvaccinated people were 11.6 times more likely to contract COVID-19, and 33.7 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19, than fully vaccinated people.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 9,541 cases of COVID-19 reported in the Northern Health region, of which 8,614 people have now recovered, according to the B.C. CDC.
On Thursday, a total of 774 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in B.C. The number of active cases in the province rose to 5,594. A total of 262 British Columbians were hospitalized with COVID as of Thursday, including 130 in intensive care.
