Province hits vaccination record, case numbers going up

A record 28,037 British Columbians – including 2,059 residents of the Northern Health region – were vaccinated against COVID-19 on Thursday, Health Minister Adrian Dix said.

Since the start of the vaccination campaign, 610,671 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in B.C., including 87,212 second doses. In the Northern Health region, a total of 31,973 doses have been administered, including 2,743 second doses, according to data released by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

Roughly 12.7 per cent of eligible British Columbians – one in eight – has received at least one dose of the vaccine, Dix said.

"We are ahead of schedule... But obviously 12.7 per cent is not close to community immunity," he said. "(And) the level of transmission in British Columbia is way too high."

There were 800 new cases of COVID-19 reported in the province on Thursday, including 58 new cases in northern B.C.

In the Northern Health region there were 300 active cases, the B.C. CDC reported. There were 42 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the north, including 11 in critical care.

Five new COVID-related deaths were reported in the province, bringing B.C.'s death toll from the pandemic to 1,446. None of the new deaths were in northern B.C., leaving the region's death toll at 120.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said several COVID-19 "variants of concern" are continuing to spread in the province.

There were 191 cases of COVID-19 variants confirmed, bringing the total number of cases identified as variants of concern at 1,772. Of those, 215 were still active, Henry said in a written statement

The U.K. variant made up 1,549 of those cases, with 176 of the Brazilian variant and 47 of the South African variant.

International data shows the U.K. variant can be more easily transmitted, she said.

"(And) it can cause increased severity of illness across the age spectrum, and that includes young people," she said. "There is little margin for error right now."

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 94,769 cases of COVID-19 in the province, including 5,699 in the Northern Health region.