BC Minister of Health Adrian Dix and provincial health officer Dr. Donnie Henry have issued a joint statement today (Friday) with updated COVID-19 statistics.
The latest numbers include a single new case in the Northern Health region, with 67 new occurrences province-wide.
Today’s growth comes despite Henry’s optimism at the province’s results when compared to modelled projections, although she indicated that the success of social distancing will not be reflected in daily numbers until sometime next week.
Total numbers of cases are as follow:
391 Vancouver Coastal Health (up 32 from the last report)
262 Fraser Health (up 21 from the last report)
57 Vancouver Island Health  (up 5 from the last report)
70 Interior Health (up 8 from the last report)
12 Northern Health  (up 1 from the last report)
Two additional long-term care homes in the Fraser Health region have staff with confirmed cases of COVID-19, resulting in a total of 11 long-term care homes in the Vancouver Coastal and Fraser Health regions with confirmed occurrences.
275 patients have now recovered and no longer have isolation requirements, although there have been 7 additional hospitalizations, bringing the total number up to 73.
“In the past few days, our upward path has been less severe than other places, but we continue to see steady increases in community transmission cases and continue to be concerned about outbreaks, which could quickly grow and challenge our pandemic response,” Henry and Dix said in their joint statement.
The release, which can be found online, ended by emphasizing the importance of the continued practice of social distancing.