Photo courtesy Province of BC

By CKPG Today

COVID-19 update

2,206 new cases of COVID-19 over the past 5 days in B.C.

Dec 29, 2020 | 3:14 PM

VICTORIA — B.C. continues to see a slight flattening of the curve when it comes to COVID-19.

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says there have been 2,206 new cases of the virus over the past five days, including 171 in Northern Health.

That’s an average of just over 441 new cases per day, quite a ways below the previous daily average since its mid-November peak though Henry admits that fewer people went in for testing over the Christmas period.

She says there are now 7,580 active cases of COVID-19 in B.C. – a drop from 8,865 on Christmas Eve – and 9,414 people are under active public health monitoring due to exposure to known cases of the virus.

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Sadly, 74 more deaths due to COVID-19 in B.C., bringing the provincial death toll to 882. Five of those deaths were in Northern Health for a total of 26 in northern B.C.

Forty-six people up north are currently hospitalized due to the virus – 16 of whom are in critical care.

The number of people in Northern Health that have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began has reached 1,890 – 1,341 of whom have recovered.

Henry says 11,930 people have been vaccinated with two people suffering allergic reactions. Both of those people have recovered.

Asked if B.C. should have vaccinated more people over the holiday weekend where it was noted there were no vaccine clinics in some areas of the province, including Northern Health, Henry shot back that health care professionals have been keeping busy nevertheless.

“We’ve done a lot of work the past week. A bit of the weekend was spent training health care staff to be able to vaccinate people,” she said.”It’s not like there wasn’t activity this weekend. My hats go off to people doing that work.”

A total of 50,815 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began in B.C., 41175 of those people have recovered.