For the latest weekly reporting period, from Jan. 31 to Feb. 6, confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Burns Lake Local Health Area (LHA) saw a slight increase from the previous week.
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 9 new infections compared to 8 in the previous week, 11 and 33 in the weeks before that and 20 in the first week of January.
The latest numbers brings the total case count for Burns Lake LHA to 158 since January 2020.
New caseloads in most of the surrounding Northwest Health Service Delivery Area LHAs for this period were Nechako 8, Smithers 5, Terrace 67, Prince Rupert 37, Kitimat 5, Nisga’a 9, Upper Skeena 15, Haida Gwaii 9 and the aggregated LHAs of Snow Country, Telegraph Creek and Stikine have gone up from no cases to 4 cases.
At the time of going to press, Northern Health had 37 new daily cases. There were 335 active cases with 10 hospitalized and 7 receiving critical care.
There have been 93 confirmed deaths and 3,488 patients considered to have recovered in the province, since the pandemic began.
The next update is expected to come out today, i.e. Wednesday.
With the cases in the Northern Health area still on the rise, the workforce restrictions on pipelines, dams and constructions camps will continue to remain in place. Starting last week, Coastal GasLink (CGL) will post its most recent workforce numbers along with COVID-19 case related information on a weekly basis to its website.
As of Feb. 9, CGL’s workforce numbers were at 662 people on their entire pipeline route. However, the breakdown on how many workers are present at each individual camp has not been made public by the company.
Since March 2020, there have been a total of 80 cases related to CGL but no new cases were recorded on the day of the weekly update.
READ MORE: Pipeline, dams will see a slow restart due to COVID-19 risk
Apart from the restrictions on the number of workers at the major worksites, the province has extended its mask mandate in public indoor and retail spaces. In fact, this mask mandate has now been extended to schools with masks being made mandatory in middle schools and high schools except for three scenarios: when students are at their own desk or workstation, when they are eating or drinking and when there is a plexiglass barrier between them. This means that masks would be mandatory even if the students are interacting within their learning cohorts.
Stricter quarantine and testing measures for travellers coming in to Canada, will also begin Feb. 22. In a daily update last week, Dr. Theresa Tam said that while the COVID-19 cases in Canada have gone done, the risk remained that trends could reverse quickly.
“These factors underscore the importance of sustaining public health measures and individual practices and not easing restrictions too fast or too soon.
“This is particularly important in light of the emergence of new virus variants of concern that could rapidly accelerate transmission of COVID-19 in Canada,” she said.
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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