British Columbia health officials reported 580 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, along with nine additional deaths.
The update saw B.C.’s seven-day average for new cases fall to 574, while the number of currently active cases climbed to 5,348.
Of the new cases, 246 were in the Fraser Health region, 104 were in the Interior Health region, 129 were in the Northern Health region and 48 were in the Island Health region.
Just 53 cases were in Vancouver Coastal Health.
Earlier Thursday, the province rolled out expanded restrictions in northern B.C., where vaccination rates have lagged and case counts have soared.
Provincial heath officer Dr. Bonnie Henry cited the rapid spread of the Delta variant among unvaccinated people as a part of the impetus for the expanded order.
“We are seeing it cause more severe illness in younger people, so if you are someone who is young and healthy and thinks I’m going to get through this no problem, that’s not the case now,” she said.
“We’re seeing this across the province, and particularly in communities in the north where unvaccinated people in their teens but primarily in their 20s and their 30s and their 40s are ending up in critical care, ending up in hospital, and today tragically we had a person in their 20s die from COVID in the north.”
There were 378 active cases in hospital, an overnight increase of four and a new high for the fourth wave. Of them, 153 people in critical or intensive care.
The hospitalization numbers do not include patients who were no longer infectious but remained in hospital for other treatment — a figure officials have not provided since Sept. 21.
More than 4.12 million people have now received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, representing 89 per cent of those eligible.
Of them, 3.84 million people — 82.9 per cent of those eligible — have had two doses.
In the past week, people who were not fully vaccinated accounted for two-thirds of all new cases, while over the past two weeks they represented 75 per cent of hospitalizations, according to Ministry of Health.
Eighty-nine per cent of cases in intensive care on Thursday were people who were not fully vaccinated.
Since the start of the pandemic, B.C. has reported 195,766 cases and 2,042 deaths.
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