For the first time since the start of the pandemic, there were more than 1,000 active cases of COVID-19 in the Northern Health region on Friday.
The B.C. Ministry of Health reported 106 new cases of COVID-19 in the north on Friday, pushing the number of active cases in the region up to 1,023. One new COVID-related death was reported in the Northern Health region on Friday, bringing the region’s death toll from the pandemic up to 171.
The B.C. Centre for Disease Control reported 68 Northern Health residents were hospitalized with COVID-19, including 22 in intensive care. Earlier this week, the province announced that 15 ICU beds in Vancouver and Victoria would be allocated to care for patients transferred out of overcrowded hospitals in the north.
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 11,115 cases of COVID-19 in the Northern Health region, of which 9,904 people have recovered.
In the Prince George local health area, which includes Mackenzie and the Robson Valley, there were 271 new cases of COVID-19 during the week of Sept. 12 to Sept. 18, according to data released by the B.C. CDC on Wednesday.
As of Friday, 87.4 per cent of eligible British Columbians (ages 12 and up) had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, and 80 per cent were fully vaccinated. As of Sept. 20, only 81 per cent of eligible people in the Prince George area had received at least one dose of vaccine, and 71 per cent were fully vaccinated.
Some areas in the Northern Health region have the lowest vaccination rates in the province, with only 50 to 52 per cent of people in northeast B.C. being fully vaccinated.
Throughout the province, 743 new cases of COVID-19 were reported on Friday, 5,979 cases were active and 319 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, including 149 in intensive care.
As of Friday, the province’s death toll from the pandemic stood at 1,922.
Between Sept. 16 and Sept. 22, 75 per cent of new COVID-19 cases in B.C. were in people who were not fully vaccinated. And between Sept. 9 and Sept. 22, people who were not fully vaccinated accounted for 81.9 per cent of those hospitalized with COVID-19.
