B.C. reported 407 new cases of COVID-19 province-wide on Tuesday, maintaining a steady rate of infection spread that provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry warns is still too high.
The situation in long-term care continues to improve, with no new outbreaks as public health officials focus their remaining supplies of available vaccines on senior facilities and front-line health care workers. There were 14 more deaths reported Tuesday, with 313 people in hospital, 71 in intensive care.
Of the new cases, 169 were discovered in the Fraser Health region, which has seen a significant decline in infections in the past few weeks. There were 124 new cases in the Vancouver Coastal region, 54 in Interior Health, 38 in Northern Health and 22 on Vancouver Island.
Like other provinces, B.C. is running low on vaccine as Pfizer expands its production facility in Belgium. Henry reported Monday that the time between doses will be extended to 42 days for some people to allow public health officials to focus the remaining vaccines on hand to complete long-term care immunizations. Available vaccine is also being reserved to deal with coronavirus outbreaks in acute-care wards.
There have been more than 122,000 doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine administered in B.C., with seniors in the community prioritized once long-term care and assisted living residents and staff have some protection from the novel coronavirus.
“The number of new daily cases of COVID-19 is much higher than we want it to be,” Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix said in a statement Jan. 26. “We are asking for everyone’s help to bend our curve back down. This is especially critical with the presence of variant viruses in our province.”
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