Jump in New Cases and three passings the focus for Wednesday COVID report

A jump in the number of new cases of COVID from the Tuesday notes and the announcement of three more passings from a Seniors facility in the Lower mainland made for the main focus of the day, as the province's Public Health Officer Doctor Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix delivered their Wednesday update.

“Today, we are announcing 18 new cases, for a total of 3,008 cases in British Columbia. “There are 162 active cases of COVID-19 in the province and 2,660 people who tested positive have recovered. “Of the total COVID-19 cases, 17 individuals are hospitalized, three of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people with COVID-19 are recovering at home in self-isolation. 

 There have been three new COVID-19 related deaths in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, for a total of 186 deaths in British Columbia. We offer our condolences to everyone who has lost their loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

There have been no new health-care facility outbreaks and the outbreak at Tabor Home has been declared over. In total, two long-term care or assisted-living facilities and one acute-care facility have active outbreaks. 

While there are no active community outbreaks in B.C., new cases and community exposure events continue to occur in the community."

The province wide overview made note of 1,018 cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 1,589 in the Fraser Health region, 133 in the Island Health region, 203 in the Interior Health region and 65 in the Northern Health region, that a constant number for near a month now for the North. 

Dr. Henry and Minister Dix did relay word of another high profile community exposure, once again spawned from a Vancouver area nightclub.

 “There has been a community exposure event at the No. 5 Orange nightclub in the Vancouver Coastal Health region. Public health teams have issued an alert for anyone who may have been at the premises on July 1.

If you have been at a location with a community exposure event, monitor yourself for symptoms, limit your contact with others and contact 811 to arrange for testing if any symptoms develop.

Contact tracing to contain the spread of COVID-19 requires all of our involvement to be successful. 

Public alerts and the temporary closure of businesses are some of the ways public heath teams are working to effectively manage COVID-19 in our communities. 

What each of us can do to support contact tracing activities is to complete our own personal risk assessment when deciding where to go and who to see. 

Fewer faces, bigger spaces is the safest approach, because we know crowded, closed spaces where people may be in close contact with each other are higher-risk environments for all of us and need to be avoided at this time."

The full report from Wednesday is available here.

The BC Centre for Disease control has some valuable Coronavirus notes related to COVID-19 you can explore that information here.

You can learn more about the outbreak from both the Province and the Federal government from the links below:

Federal Government site

British Columbia Government site

The World Health Organization website also offers up the latest advisories on the global situation.

More from  Northern Health can be reviewed here 

You can review our archive of past statements and local information here.

Local governments and organizations have also provided for increased awareness of COVID-19 issues, the string of statements that came quickly at the end of the week can be reviewed here.

For notes from across Canada and British Columbia we have been archiving the latest items through our political portal Darcy McGee

Ottawa Observations

Victoria Viewpoints

Cross posted from the North Coast Review.