British Columbia has recorded another 2,542 cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.
Four more people who tested positive for the virus have died, including one person in their 40s, Global News has learned.
This brings the total to 2,427 people who have died since the beginning of the pandemic.
There has also been a big jump in the number of people in hospitals with the virus.
An additional 78 people have been admitted since Friday, bringing that total to 298. Of those people, 86 are now in intensive care – an increase of 13 since Friday.
There are now 27,106 active cases in B.C. and a total of 266,710 since early 2020.
Over the weekend, the province recorded 9,332 cases of the virus.
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These included 4,033 from Friday to Saturday, 3,069 from Saturday to Sunday and 2,230 from Sunday to Monday.
Because Monday was a statutory holiday for some, the province did not provide information on vaccinations, hospitalizations and deaths, or cases and hospitalizations by vaccination status.
The Tuesday numbers come as B.C. provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, said the province is now in a “different race” in the pandemic.
The Omicron variant accounts for more than 80 per cent of recorded cases, she added, and putting additional health orders in place won’t be B.C.’s way forward.
Henry warned businesses to expect up to a third of their employees to become infected in this wave of the pandemic, and said the onus will be on them to implement rigorous safety plans.
“I do think it is over to the sector now, it’s not me who can order these,” she said.
“From the very beginning, public health orders are there as a last resort, when we want to make sure people are absolutely doing them, and we want to do it in what we call the least restrictive means.”
— with files from Elizabeth McSheffrey
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