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With Dr. Bonnie Henry taking a rare day off, Dr. Reka Gustafson joined Adrian Dix for today’s live COVID-19 briefing.
Gustafson announced just 481 new cases of COVID-19 in the province since the last update on Friday.
That included 218 cases on Saturday, 131 cases on Sunday and 133 cases today.
There are currently 2,102 active cases in BC, with 199 people in hospital with the virus, 63 of them in critical care and 38 of them requiring mechanical ventilation.
BC’s active case, hospitalization and critical care numbers all continue to trend in the right direction.
Unfortunately, there were 12 more deaths due to COVID-19 reported over the weekend, which brings the province’s pandemic death toll up to 1,722.
As of today, there have been 3,635,795 doses of all three COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in BC and 314,246 of them are second doses.
That means 74% of the province’s adult population has received at least one dose of a vaccine, while 72% of British Columbians over 12 have that first dose.
According to Gustafson, 39% of youth between the ages of 12 and 17 have received a vaccine.
“As cases continue to decline, daily fluctuations, especially in cases, will be less and less meaningful,” said Gustafson.
“Seven-day averages and long-term trends are going to be better indicators of our progress.”
As long as BC continues on the trajectory we’ve seen in recent weeks, the approach will shift from pandemic emergency response to sustainable public health management.
“This approach is actually similar to how we prevent and control other communicable diseases,” Gustafson explained.
“In BC, strong local public health teams monitor, prevent and control communicable diseases every day. Normally they do it so well that we rarely hear about them in the news.”
She said that once the population is sufficiently immunized, COVID-19 will become one of those communicable diseases that is effectively and expertly managed by public health.
