VICTORIA -- Health officials identified 19 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Island region on Wednesday.
The new cases were among 531 cases found across B.C. over the past 24 hours.
Officials have now recorded 2,613 cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Island region since the pandemic began.
The COVID-19 death toll on Vancouver Island remained unchanged Wednesday at 28.
There are currently 242 active cases of COVID-19 in the island region, including nine people in hospital and one in critical care.
Island Health identified the locations of 202 active cases of the disease on Wednesday, including 110 active cases in the Central Island, 48 in the South Island and 44 in the North Island.
One more person in B.C. died of the disease Wednesday, bringing the provincial death toll to 1,394.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix said Wednesday that 355,340 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have now been in B.C., including 86,960 secondary doses.
The number of COVID-19 variant cases in B.C. continues to climb as the province confirmed 51 new variant cases on Wednesday. There have been 627 variants recorded in the province, including 109 cases that are now considered active.
There were no new health-care outbreaks reported in the province Wednesday.
Health officials say doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have started to arrive in B.C. and will be used to supplement the province’s age-based immunization program.
"In particular, we will use this vaccine to assist with outbreak response in communities and within high-risk industries," Dix and Henry said. "With each person who is immunized, it means our friends and loved ones are safer and we are all closer to putting COVID-19 behind us."
