B.C. breaks single-day record for COVID-19 cases

In the last 24 hours, 1,308 people have tested positive for COVID-19 — the highest-ever single-day case count in B.C.

Tuesday’s update comes on the heels of the province announcing more restrictions in an attempt to curb a surge in cases driven by the Omicron variant. The previous record for daily cases 1,293, on April 8.

Vancouver Coastal Health saw the highest number of new cases with 525. There were 419 in Fraser Health, 202 in Island Health, 138 in Interior Health,23 in Northern Health, and 23 in Northern Health. There has been one new case detected in a person who lives outside of Canada. One more person has passed away, bringing the total number of deaths to 2,403.

Record high new cases 1308 (last was 1293 Apr 8)
Active cases 6348 (record is 10039 Dec 14-2020)
Still just one acute care outbreak (none in LTC)
Hospitalizations remaining low (which won’t last)
One death.#bcpoli #covid19 @CityNewsVAN pic.twitter.com/xZCbdofujN

— LizaYuzda (@LizaYuzda) December 22, 2021

The rapid increase in new cases in the province’s most populous regions is one of the reasons Dr. Bonnie Henry said harsh new measures — including closing bars, clubs, and gyms — are now necessary.

“We’ve seen a rapid takeoff in cases, particularly in Vancouver Coastal, where cases have been low for some time, and also in Fraser health. We’ve seen the leveling off in the Interior and the rapid increase in Island Health which has had low cases along the way. We’ve continued to see decreases in Northern Health, but again, we need to be prepared for this to level off as well,” she said.

“We are at the point where we’ve seen hospitalizations decrease and particularly we are still not seeing yet hospitalizations increased dramatically for those people who are unvaccinated or, thankfully, in vaccinated cases. This gives us some suggestion of the protection that vaccination gives. Having said that, we know this is a lagging indicator, and we’ve started to see in other jurisdictions that this can also take off quite rapidly.”

There are 192 people in the hospital, 76 of whom are in intensive care.

There are now 756 confirmed Omicron cases in the province, up from 302 last Friday. The highest number of these — 413 — are in Vancouver Coastal Health. In Island Health there are 204, Fraser health has 129, Interior Health has eight, and Northern Health has two.

Henry said people between 19 and 59 years old are getting infected at higher rates than they have been ion other waves of the pandemic.

“Where this transmission is really taking off is in younger people who are more highly connected: They go to work, they have children, their connections in the community, and social connections as well,” she said.