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There were 1,293 new cases of COVID-19 reported in B.C. today, a new single-day record.
B.C. smashes one-day COVID-19 case count with 1,293
By Hannah Scott, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
Published 3:26 PDT, Thu April 8, 2021
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B.C. health authorities reported 1,293 new cases of COVID-19 today, another record. Since the pandemic began, B.C. has recorded 108,278 cases.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said the new case number may be adjusted later due to a delay in the refresh of the regular reporting system.
Of the new cases, 448 are in the Vancouver Coastal Health region (including Richmond), 645 in the Fraser Health region, 69 in the Island Health region, 80 in the Interior Health region and 51 in the Northern Health region.
The latest local data shows there were 218 new cases in Richmond between March 28 and April 3.
There are 9,184 active cases of COVID-19 in B.C. and 336 people are hospitalized, 101 of whom are in intensive care. A further 15,203 people are under active public health monitoring.
Health authorities did not provide an update on variant cases and said they would be changing their testing and reporting strategy. Tests will no longer be routinely sequenced for confirmation, but “we just assume that those screen positives will be the variant.”
“We assume that anybody who is positive for COVID-19 needs to be treated as if they have one of these highly transmissible viruses,” said Henry.
“We need now to shift our strategy so that we can use the whole genome sequencing capacity we have in British Columbia to do more systematic testing and sampling of all of the strains to make sure we’re not missing another important one that may be arising.”
Whole genome sequencing will be used to help understand new outbreaks, chains and clusters, as well as determining the number of travellers who have variants of concern. Systematic screening of variant testing will be part of the weekly surveillance reports.
“We are having increased numbers of people who have been infected with COVID-19, and part of that is driven by the increased transmissibility of the strains we are seeing in BC right now,” said Henry.
To date, 985,001 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in B.C., 87,564 of which are second doses.
Sadly, there were two new virus-related deaths reported today, bringing that total to 1,493.
Henry reported one new healthcare facility outbreak and declared one over. Outbreaks continue at four long-term care, assisted living and independent living facilities and seven acute care facilities.
For the latest medical updates, including case counts, prevention, risks and to find a testing centre near you: http://www.bccdc.ca/ or follow @CDCofBC on Twitter.
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