British Columbia reported another nine COVID-19-related deaths Friday, as the number of cases in hospital scraped just below 1,000 yet again.
Health officials said there were 990 positive cases in B.C. hospitals, an overnight increase of 13, along with 141 cases in critical or intensive care.
Officials confirmed another 2,137 new cases for a known total of 30,515 active cases in B.C., though case counts no longer reflect the actual spread of the virus due to limits on testing.
There were seven new health-care outbreaks, including one at Nanaimo Regional Hospital, one at the Cowichan District Hospital and five in long-term care.
As of Friday, 86.9 per cent of B.C.’s population (89.8 per cent of those eligible) have had one dose of vaccine, 81.1 per cent of all British Columbians (83.8 per cent of those eligible) have had two doses, and 39.4 per cent of the population (43.9 per cent of those eligible) have had three doses.
For the second day in a row, the province said its daily update on the breakdown of cases and hospitalizations by vaccination status was unavailable.
However, data released Friday by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control covering the period from Dec. 28 to Jan. 24 showed that unvaccinated people continued to be disproportionately affected by severe outcomes from the virus.
Per 100,000 population, there were 161.8 unvaccinated people in hospital compared to 53.9 vaccinated people, 31 unvaccinated people in ICUs compared to 7.3 unvaccinated people, and 13.7 deaths among the unvaccinated, compared to three among the vaccinated.
Earlier Friday, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix marked the two-year anniversary of the confirmation of the B.C.’s first case of COVID-19.
“There have been five waves, many variants and likely many more to come,” Henry said, adding that under the current, widespread transmission of the virus’s Omicron variant, contact tracing was no longer a realistic option.
In the two years since the pandemic began in B.C., the province has reported 321,043 total cases and 2,597 deaths.
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