Health officials are reporting 358 new cases of COVID-19 in the past three days.
Of those, 330 were in the Lower Mainland. Just 13 were in Interior Health, while 11 were in Island Health and four were in Northern Health.
There were also four new deaths from the virus in B.C. on the weekend, three in Fraser Health and one was in Vancouver Coastal Health.
There are now 1,353 active cases. Sixty-six people are in hospital with COVID-19 are there are 16 people in critical care. Meanwhile, another 3,010 people are in isolation across B.C. because they were in direct contact with someone who has the virus.
In all, there were about 33,000 tests performed over the last three days, with a positivity rate of 1.03 per cent.
Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry also presented new modelling during today’s briefing, which showed that even though the number of new cases continues to be high, the rate of growth has started to drop again.
“We are flattening our curve. It’s the work of all of us as individuals and communities that is making this difference,” she said, noting the average number of new infections per COVID-19 case has now dropped below one, while the average person is now having about 45 per cent of their normal close contacts.
Henry again appeals to people to make sure that trend continues as we approach the Thanksgiving long weekend.
“This year I encourage everybody to be large in thanks, large in gratitude, but small in size,” she added, noting people should avoid travelling to celebrate with friends and family, to serve individual plates of food instead of a buffet and to dine outside, if possible.
“We have started to flatten our curve, now we need to bend it down,” Henry added.
“We need to be careful this weekend. Thanksgiving weekend. We need to keep our group small. We need to avoid unnecessary travel like we did in the spring because we know that we can bring this virus with us. And it is travel even within B.C., but particularly having people come in from other provinces, other places in the world.”
In all, there have now been 9,739 reported cases of COVID-19 in this province and 242 deaths since January.
