Photo Courtesy: Province of British Columbia, Flickr

By Veronica Beltran

COVID Update

‘The numbers are higher than what we’d like to see’: 549 cases of COVID-19 in B.C.

Oct 13, 2020 | 3:50 PM

VICTORIA–549 cases of COVID-19 were reported over the Thanksgiving long weekend in B.C.

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry explained that the higher number was due, in part, to a backlog of nearly 6,000 tests, which were cleared over the weekend.

“The numbers are higher than what we’d like to see.”–Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C. Provincial Health Officer

“It is important to look at them in context,” added Dr. Henry. “As we know our lab teams are working to process as many tests as (possible) as we’ve increased our numbers over the past week…there were a number of events that conspired that at the end of last week there was a bit of a backlog.”

The rate of positivity remained at 1.39 per cent out of over 39,000 tests that were conducted and processed over the weekend.

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“We are also… working on a province-wide plan to ensure that our testing system is operating as efficiently as it can be.”–Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C. Provincial Health Officer

Cases by Health Region:

• Vancouver Coastal Health: 3,892
• Fraser Health: 5,595
• Vancouver Island Health: 235
• Interior Health: 582
• Northern Health: 341
• People who reside outside of Canada: 89

Provincially 549 new cases were announced, including five epi-linked cases, for a total of 10,734 since the start of the pandemic. The North saw an increase in 10 cases over the Thanksgiving long weekend.

Five new deaths were reported, for a total of 250. 1,476 cases are active with 77 people in hospital and 24 in ICU. 3,618 people are under public health monitoring for being exposed to a known case of the virus.

There are four new health care outbreaks and two that have been declared over for a total of 20 active outbreaks in the health care system. 8,974 people have recovered from the virus.

Photo Courtesy: Province of British Columbia, Flickr.