William Konkin Elementary (WKE) School received a Northern Health letter last week of a possible COVID-19 exposure incident in the school.
According to the letter dated Mar. 19, a COVID-19 exposure had been identified at WKE between Mar. 10 to Mar. 12.
When a confirmed case of COVID-19 is identified as being part of the school community, it means that a staff member or a student may have been at school while they were potentially infectious, but that doesn’t mean that anyone in particular has been exposed. Moreover, when such an exposure incident takes place, NH does contact tracing and notifies only those who have been identified as close contacts.
The self-monitoring for those in close contact would end on Mar. 26.
For the latest weekly reporting period, from Mar. 7 to Mar. 13, confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Burns Lake Local Health Area (LHA) went up to two new cases.
The map which divides the province into local health areas, shows the number of cases recorded there during each week from Sunday to Saturday. Each region is also shaded based on the daily cases per 100,000 residents in each area.
The Burns Lake LHA saw two new infections compared to zero in the previous week, nine in the last week of January and 20 in the first week of January.
The total case count for Burns Lake LHA now stands at 172 cases since January 2020.
New caseloads in most of the surrounding Northwest Health Service Delivery Area LHAs for the last week were Nechako 4, Smithers 2, Terrace 23, Prince Rupert 117, Kitimat 11, Nisga’a 4, Upper Skeena 17, Haida Gwaii 9 and the aggregated LHAs of Snow Country, Telegraph Creek and Stikine and Quesnel at 0 cases.
At the time of going to press, Northern Health had 54 new daily cases. There were 321 active cases with 32 hospitalized and 14 receiving critical care.
There have been 112 confirmed deaths and 4,922 patients considered to have recovered since the pandemic began.
The next update is expected to come out today, i.e. Wednesday.
On Mar. 12, the Health Service Delivery Area (HSDA) update for the period of Mar. 5 to Mar. 11 showed a total of 3,745 cases in the province, 59 of which were from unknown service delivery area and three in out-of-country residents. The next HSDA update will be released on Mar. 26.
The province has now entered the second stage of the vaccination plan and at the time of going to press, had administered 465,584 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Last week, the province also announced an updated timeline for vaccination, moving up the dates and stating that all adults in the province would be vaccinated by July.
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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