VICTORIA -- Vancouver Island has reached a new milestone in the battle against COVID-19 as the number of laboratory confirmed cases of coronavirus has reached zero across the Island Health region.
According to the B.C. COVID-19 dashboard, which was last updated on June 4, all of the Island Health region’s 130 confirmed cases of the virus have been resolved.
In total, 125 people have recovered from the virus in the region, while five have died. One person in the health region, who was in intensive care for treatment of the virus for weeks, has since recovered.
While the new data is promising and reflects many islanders’ efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has been quick to note that every health region is still at risk of an outbreak of the virus.
On May 21, after Island Health had reported no new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in two full weeks, Henry said that some cases may be occurring without a verified test.
“We are not catching everybody that has it, we know it’s in all of our communities,” she said at the time.
On Thursday, B.C. health officials announced the latest modelling data of COVID-19 in the province.
The data suggested that the majority of cases on Vancouver Island have been found in the northern region.
Island Health’s northern region, which includes parts of the mainland’s central coast, has recorded 59 cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
Meanwhile, the south island has reported 43 confirmed cases of the virus while the mid-island has confirmed 25 cases.
These test-positive cases account for 127 of the Island Health region’s 130 total. Health officials say that the remaining three cases are “epi-linked” cases, meaning they are cases that are believed to have occurred but were not tested.
The cases are believed to have occurred in people who were close contacts of other confirmed cases of COVID-19. However, these people did not get a test for a variety of reasons, which could have included the fact that their symptoms were mild or a test was unavailable at the time.
As of Thursday, B.C. had seen 2,632 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 166 deaths related to the virus since the pandemic began.
At the same time, 2,265 people have recovered from the virus, leaving 201 active cases in the province – none of which are located in the Island Health region.
