BC to provide update on COVID-19 pandemic – BC News – Castanet.net

BC to provide update on COVID-19 pandemic – BC News – Castanet.net

The B.C. government has announced 1,506 new coronavirus cases, including 80 in the Interior Health region, in the past 72 hours.

The new cases bring the province’s total since the pandemic began to 88,373 , although the vast majority have already recovered. There are now 4,987 active cases in B.C.

The cases were confirmed over the weekend as follows:

• March 12/13 — 555 cases
• March 13/14 — 491 cases
• March 14/15 — 460 cases

There were another 10 COVID-19 related deaths over the weekend, bringing B.C.’s toll to 1,407

There are 269 people hospitalized with the virus in B.C., 76 of whom are in intensive care.

To date, 409,103 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in B.C.

There were 163 cases of mutated COVID-19 variants confirmed over the weekend. There have now been 880 cases of variants confirmed in B.C., although just 193 remain active.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry threw her support behind the AstraZeneca vaccine as shipments start to arrive in Canada. Several European countries have suspended its use while incidents of blood clots are investigated.

Dr. Henry said there have been about 37 blood clotting incidents across the countries, a rate “lower than we might see in the general population, even without vaccination.”

She said Health Canada is watching the situation closely as it has been determined that certain lot numbers of the vaccine — none of which are in Canada — seem to be more linked to the clotting.

“We are confident that is not a risk we are seeing here in Canada with the AZ-SII vaccine that we have here… we’ll be watching this very closely.”

“We also know that infection with COVID-19 can lead to these types of conditions as well, at a much higher rate. We have seen that here in B.C., tragically, where we’ve had even young people die at home from blood clotting.”

Published at Mon, 15 Mar 2021 21:55:00 +0000