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“We’re facing COVID-19 for a long time to come. For months and months and months and months and months and months and months to come. We’re going to be dealing with COVID-19 and for us to do all the things that we want, to have children in school, to have surgeries performed, to have businesses operating, to have some normalcy in these extraordinary times in our lives, we need to follow public health guidance and public health advice.”
Gustafson said there were now 2,945 active cases of COVID-19 in B.C., of which 90 were in hospital including 19 in intensive care. She said that while those numbers were very concerning, hospitalizations were stable.
Of the new cases, the majority (830) were in the Fraser Health region, with 234 reported in the Vancouver Coastal Health region.
There have been 15,501 cases of COVID-19 reported since the first case appeared in B.C. in late January and 269 deaths.
Gustafson said there were 6,448 people in self isolation after potentially being exposed to the disease.
There are 28 active outbreaks in health-care facilities, including three reported over the weekend. Of these, 26 are in long-term care facilities and two in acute care settings. So far, 457 health-care workers at long-term care facilities have contracted the virus. All six people who died over the weekend were in long-term care.
There were no community outbreaks reported over the weekend.
Dix said there were 24,771 COVID-19 tests performed over the weekend and over 5,000 calls were made to the 811 COVID helpline – and the Ministry of Health was hiring more COVID-19 contact tracers.
