Kevin Forsyth
Vancouver Island reported one new case of COVID-19 today. There were 82 new cases announced across B.C., along with one more death in the Fraser Health region. A record 10, 899 number of tests were completed province-wide yesterday.
“I think that’s an incredible feat as our laboratories have been ramping up across the province. There’s been some challenges in some places, but this really speaks to the amazing work that people are doing,” said Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer.
There is one new healthcare outbreak in the George Derby Centre long-term care home in Burnaby — the second outbreak in the facility.
“It was a single healthcare worker, so we are hopeful and Fraser [Health] is on-site, working with the team to manage this outbreak,” said Henry.
She added there were 18 active healthcare outbreaks across the province — 15 in long-term care and three in acute care units.
No new community outbreaks were reported today, although there continue to be community exposure events, Henry said. There are no reported COVID-19 exposures at any schools within the Island Health region, according to its website.
“I know that there is a lot of concern and anxiety, still, around schools and I know this is because we all want everybody in school settings, particularly our children, the educators and all staff in our schools to be safe. We have, as you know, developed COVID safety plans for each school,” said Henry.
She said public health teams have done contact tracing every time a case has been identified in a school. Henry also clarified several definitions related to schools and the novel coronavirus.
“A school exposure is when a single person is confirmed positive for COVID-19, has been in the school, during their infectious period,” she said, adding a cluster is defined as two or more people who have tested positive attended a school.
Henry said an outbreak in a school setting is when there is ongoing, widespread transmission between groups and it is not clear who has been transmitting to whom.
“We have not had any outbreaks in our schools yet in British Columbia. It is a possibility — we have seen it happen in other places and we are watching for that,” she said.
Henry said about one third of recent clusters were connected to private social gatherings, in addition to workplaces, long-term care homes and hospitals. She emphasized the clusters were trending smaller and daily case numbers were levelling off.
Less than one per cent of people tested for COVID-19 were positive today, according to Henry.
“That tells us that we’re doing a good job at finding people and this is a true levelling off of our cases,” she said.
