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B.C.’s COVID-19 updates for May 17
Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer, and Adrian Dix, Minister of Health, have issued the following joint statement regarding updates on the COVID-19 response in British Columbia:
Today, we are reporting on three periods. From May 14 to May 15, we had 443 new cases. From May 15 to May 16, we had 493 new cases, and in the last 24 hours, we had a further 424 new cases.
This results in 1,360 new cases over the period, for a total of 139,664 cases in British Columbia.
There are 5,021 active cases of COVID-19 in the province. A further 132,841 people who tested positive have recovered.
Of the active cases, 350 individuals are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 132 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.
Since we last reported, we have had 291 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 861 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 36 in the Island Health region, 125 in the Interior Health region, 47 in the Northern Health region and no new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.
There have been 14 new COVID-19 related deaths, for a total of 1,648 deaths in British Columbia. Our condolences are with the family, friends and caregivers of the people who have died as a result of COVID-19.
Everyone in B.C. who is 18 or older can now register and book their vaccine. It is your turn, and we encourage you to book your appointment as soon as you can, remembering that all vaccines take three weeks to be fully effective.
To date, 2,528,398 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in B.C., 130,073 of which are second doses. That means 55.8% of eligible adults have received at least one vaccine dose.
We are not yet ready to make any changes to the current provincial health orders and they will remain in place through the upcoming long weekend. This means we all still need to stay local, stay small and use all of our safety layers.
A sustained increase in immunizations, combined with a slowdown of new cases and outbreaks, are what will allow us to gradually ease some of the restrictions and get to the next phase.
We’re closely monitoring our progress to determine what changes we can safely make and when. So, let’s keep pushing vaccinations up and pushing COVID-19 down.
What you do today determines how we will be doing two and three weeks from now, which is why your efforts today are so important. Let’s keep the momentum going, let’s break the chains of transmission and let’s break the record of people getting vaccinated to get to the brighter days ahead.
Lead image: COVID-19 safety at the entry to Mountainside Market in Radium Hot Springs. Carrie Schafer/e-KNOW photo
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