British Columbia reported more than 1,200 new COVID-19 cases for the fourth time in eight days, along with three additional deaths on Thursday.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced the 1,205 new cases at a live briefing where she delivered sobering new modelling showing the virus on track to hit 3,000 cases per day, if trends do not change.
“Right now, the rate of infectious contacts we’re having, so the contacts where the virus can be transmitted to others, on average in the province is somewhere around 55-60 per cent. That is too high,” Henry said.
“We need to get down to 40 per cent or less, and we have done that consistently — we were able to do that last March, we did that in November when we put in restrictions again.”
The number of people in hospital hit 409, climbing over 400 for the first time in the pandemic.
A record 125 of those patients were in intensive care.
The number of active cases in B.C. also set a new record of 10,052, topping the 10,039 recorded on Dec. 14.
Of the new cases, 301 were in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 730 were in the Fraser Health region, 31 were in the Island Health region, 69 were in the Interior Health region and 66 were in the Northern Health region.
Despite transmission being driven by more contagious COVID-19 variants of concern, Henry said British Columbians need to stick with the same tactics as they used to fight the original strain
“We need to pay attention to what we know works to prevent those transmissions,” Henry said.
“That means staying small, staying outside, wearing masks, keeping our distance from people — the things we know stop transmission haven’t changed. Our risk has changed because this virus is transmitting more easily.”
About 22 per cent of B.C.’s population, 1,147,964 people, have had at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
B.C. has reported a total of 116,075 cases, while 1,524 people have died