VICTORIA -- Three more people have died of COVID-19 in British Columbia and 525 new cases have been identified, health officials announced Tuesday.
The daily update pushed the province’s death toll from the virus to 284, while the number of active cases has reached an all-time high.
There have been 19,239 COVID-19 cases in British Columbia since the start of the pandemic, of which 5,133 are considered active Tuesday.
There are 142 people in hospital with COVID-19, including 46 people in intensive care.
Seven of the new cases recorded Tuesday are in the Island Health region, bringing the regional total to 308 cases since the pandemic began. Seven new cases were also found in the Northern Health region and 27 in the Interior Health region.
In the Lower Mainland, where the vast majority of the province’s coronavirus cases have been found, the Vancouver Coastal Health region identified 159 new cases Tuesday and the Fraser Health region recorded 325 new infections.
Two new health-care facility outbreaks were identified Tuesday – one at Holyrood Manor in Maple Ridge and the other at the Burnaby Hospital. There are now 33 outbreaks in the B.C health-care system.
“We need to break the chains of transmission and slow the surge of COVID-19 cases – especially in the regions and locations of highest spread,” said provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix in a statement Tuesday.
Approximately 9,781 people are under public health monitoring in B.C. due to exposure to known cases of the virus, while 13,704 people who tested positive have now recovered.
“A growing number of people in British Columbia are now self-isolating at home, away from their work, school, friends and family, which in turn is creating unnecessary financial and emotional strain for far too many,” Henry and Dix said. “We can turn this trend around and the time to do that is now.”
The health officials conjured the sacrifices of Canadian war veterans ahead of Remembrance Day, asking British Columbians to make “our own small sacrifices right now” to prevent the spread of the virus.
