New COVID-19 cases continue to climb in B.C. with 634 in 24 hours

Just as the province gets ready to start scheduling its mass vaccine rollout next week, the bad news is that there were 634 new COVID-19 cases recorded in the last 24 hours.

That’s one of the highest number of new cases in the past few weeks.

Thirty-three of those were in the Interior Health region.

“We are regularly reviewing the public health restrictions to assess when we can safely ease them,” states a joint statement issued today, March 5, by provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix. “The number of new cases remains higher than where we want it to be.”

Starting Monday, March 8, people over the age of 90 and Indigenous people over 65 can start booking vaccination appointments.

Go to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control website to find out more.

The number to call for residents of the Interior Health region is 1-877-740-7747. People should only call once their age group window opens.

Of the new cases most, 365, were in the Fraser Health region, 149 in Vancouver Coastal, 26 on Vancouver Island and 60 in the Northern Health region.

There were four more deaths, bringing the provincial total to 1,380.

There are 4,901 active cases in B.C. with 255 people in hospital, 66 of whom are in intensive care.

There have been four more variants of concern for a total of 250 such cases but only 12 are active. Of those 222 are the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant while 28 are the B.a.351 (South Africa) variant.

To date, 311,208 doses of vaccine have been administered, 86,865 of which are second doses.

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