- Update: A health ministry spokesperson provided a statement to the NOW Tuesday afternoon about the rumoured Burnaby case of coronavirus: “BCCDC is aware of reports of an unconfirmed case of novel coronavirus in an individual who spent time in the Lower Mainland and has returned to China. Even if the case is confirmed, given what we know about the virus and human-to-human transmission, the risk to British Columbians is very low. We will notify the public about any confirmed cases and when there is risk from an exposure.”
B.C.’s provincial health officer cautioned Lower Mainland residents not to believe or spread rumours about the novel coronavirus.
Bonnie Henry said officials have thoroughly investigated reports of an individual said to have visited Burnaby last week while sick and subsequently diagnosed with the deadly disease once back in China.
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“We are confident that there is no risk to people in British Columbia,” she said, referring to the rumoured case.
Henry made the comments at a press conference Tuesday morning where she announced the province’s first confirmed “presumptive” case of the new virus, which has infected more than 4,500 and killed more than 100 people in China, according to the New York Times. That patient, a man in his 40s, recently returned from Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the outbreak began, Henry said.
While health officials are confident further testing will conclusively confirm the province’s first diagnosis, Henry said there is no reason to believe rumours of another case that have spread online.
Posts on Chinese social media app WeChat have spread through Metro Vancouver, relaying a supposed incident in which a visitor from China was sent home from Burnaby Hospital, Vancouver General Hospital and a Burnaby clinic despite having told health-care providers they had recently come from Wuhan, where relatives had been diagnosed with the virus.
Some reports from Chinese-language media outlets include a list of locations in Richmond, Vancouver and Burnaby where the individual is said to have visited.
The source of the information was James Wang, a Burnaby city councillor.
On Monday evening, Wang told the NOW he had first heard of the story second hand but eventually was able to contact the individual directly via WeChat.
He said the individual in question was a woman who was in town to visit her daughter, a Burnaby resident. Wang said the mother became frustrated by the lack of testing and treatment here and returned to China where she checked into a Shanghai hospital and was subsequently diagnosed with the coronavirus.
According to Wang, the woman wanted to share the information to ensure people in Metro Vancouver take the appropriate precautions and don’t become infected as well.
Wang said he wrote to Health Minister Adrian Dix about the incident and went public with it in order to inform the public.
Before the public health officer dismissed the “rumour” publicly, Wang said he had already heard some criticism from people who said he shouldn’t have told the story publicly. He said he was simply trying to share information he felt was important to the public.
“I am not announcing this one; I am sharing,” he said. “I hope our provincial government can take serious all these kinds of things.”
Henry did not specify why there is no need for concern relating to this case.
Henry said there is also no need for concern about local infections resulting from the confirmed case of coronavirus because that patient self-quarantined before he became infectious to others.
She called the risk in B.C. “extremely low.”
