BC COVID-19 Update – March 16, 2021

Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer (PHO), and Adrian Dix, Minister of Health, have issued the following joint statement regarding updates on the COVID-19 response in British Columbia:

“Today, we are reporting 556 new cases, including 14 epi-linked cases, for a total of 88,929 cases in British Columbia.

“There are 4,999 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, with 9,511 people under active public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases. A further 82,436 people who tested positive have recovered.

“Of the active cases, 280 individuals are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 84 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.

“Since we last reported, we have had 139 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 331 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 27 in the Island Health region, 16 in the Interior Health region, 41 in the Northern Health region and two new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.

“There have been 116 new confirmed COVID-19 cases that are variants of concern identified in our province in the last day, for a total of 996 cases. Of the total cases, 130 are active and the remaining people have recovered. This includes 921 cases of the B.1.1.7 (U.K.) variant, 41 cases of the B.1.351 (South Africa) variant and 34 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant.

“To date, 424,517 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in B.C., 87,070 of which are second doses.

“There have been no new COVID-19 related deaths, for a total of 1,407 deaths in British Columbia.