BC COVID-19 Update – March 17, 2021

Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer, 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 498 new cases, for a total of 89,427 cases in British Columbia.

“There are 4,851 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, with 9,472 people under active public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases. A further 83,083 people who tested positive have recovered.

“Of the active cases, 281 individuals are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 83 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people with COVID-19 are recovering at home in self-isolation.

“Since we last reported, we have had 128 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 291 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 12 in the Island Health region, 31 in the Interior Health region, 36 in the Northern Health region and no new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.

“Due to a lab sequencing issue, no new variant of concern data is available today. As of the most recent report, there have been 996 confirmed COVID-19 cases that are variants of concern identified in our province.

“To date, 444,140 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in B.C., 87,093 of which are second doses.

“There have been four new COVID-19 related deaths, for a total of 1,411 deaths in British Columbia.