B.C. health officials say there were 1,759 new cases of COVID-19 in the past three days, and that 20 people died from the virus in that time.
That includes 131 new cases in Interior Health and five deaths across the Interior. Health Minister Adrian Dix says someone died from COVID-19 in all five health authorities over the weekend.
Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says one of the people who died was over the age of 90, 15 were over the age of 70, two were in their 50s, and two were in their 40s. One of the two people in their forties who passed away lived in Interior Health.
“It shows us that nobody is immune and this virus still has a tremendous negative impact on our seniors and our elders and our community across the province,” Henry said. “We know how challenging it is is to have to mourn during this difficult time.”
For new cases elsewhere in B.C., there were 1,201 in Fraser Health, 325 in Vancouver Coastal Health, 52 in Northern Health and 50 in Island Health.
Hospitalizations dropped to 415 people down from 445 from Friday. The number of people in intensive care dropped from 157 on Friday to 150 today. Active cases are now at 6,140, down more than 600 people from Friday.
There were more than 116,000 vaccine doses administered over the past three days, which means 2,159,135 doses have been administered in the province. Of those total doses, 106,058 have been second doses.
Henry says as of 7 p.m. tonight, any person aged 40 and older in the province will be able to book a vaccine appointment.
“Our immunization program is rapidly accelerating and we are receiving more and more vaccines. This means we can move down our age based program very rapidly in the next few weeks,” she said.
“Text and email alerts will be going to everyone who has registered, so if you have not yet registered, please, do that right away. This is the most efficient and the fastest way to get your vaccine.”
Henry says if you got your first dose of the vaccine before the online registration system began on April 6, you should register with the province. If you received your first dose at a pharmacy, you’re also being asked to register with the province.
“This ensures your dose is reserved for you and we can get it to your clinic as soon as its available,” noting it will be second doses for some people and first doses for others.
Also, Henry says more “granular data” on COVID-19 will be available on the BC Centre for Disease Control website starting on Wednesday, likely to include vaccination information and rates of infection broken down by neighbourhoods.
This comes after a report last week from Vancouver Sun which showed that, week-over-week, the B.C. government has been releasing only about 25 per cent of the total information it has available.
