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B.C. public health officials warned residents to follow COVID-19 restrictions during the Easter Weekend as the province’s vaccination plan slowly rolls out.
More than 710,000 British Columbians have received a first dose of one of three vaccines, just over 16 per cent of the 4.3 million residents over 16 year of age eligible for a vaccine.
That’s running ahead of an anticipated 10 per cent of eligible British Columbians that were expected to be vaccinated by the end of March.
The first to get vaccines have been frontline health-care workers, staff and residents in long-term care and those in older age groups, 80 and over.
Provincial health officials forecast that all those that are eligible for a vaccine will have been offered one by the end of June or early July.
Still, COVID-19 case numbers have been reaching daily highs recently and coronavirus variants of concern, virus mutations that can spread more easily and can cause worse ilness, are on the rise.
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The rise in cases and concern about increased hospitalizations caused the B.C. government on Monday to announce a series of renewed restrictions to act as a circuit breaker that included shutting dining inside restaurants and pubs until at least April 19. Patios may remain open.
An earlier order prohibiting gatherings indoors with anyone outside your household remains in place.
Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial public health officer, on Thursday urged anyone that was going to gather on the Easter Weekend to do so outside only and for people who wished to travel for leisure to do so locally. She suggested only day trips were appropriate or to stay in local campgrounds or hotels.
“We need to make this a safe long weekend so that we can get through this phase of our pandemic as more and more vaccine is available in the weeks to come,” said Henry.
“We all have the same ability to spread COVID-19, and we all have the same ability to stop the spread, and we know what to do,” said Henry. “Staying small, staying outside, staying local will help us bend our curve again as our immunization program moves up.”
Another 832 daily cases were announced Thursday, bringing the total tested positive cases in the province to 100,880.
Another 90 cases of variants of concern were announced Thursday. They are not a subset of the daily cases as there is a lag in testing and reporting variant cases. It brings the total number of variant cases to 2,643 cases, of which 2,214 cases are the variant (B.1.1.7) identified in the U.K. Another 50 cases are the variant (B.1.351) identified in South African and 379 are the variant (P.1) identified in Brazil.
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There are 296 people hospitalized, with 79 in intensive care.
There has been five new COVID-19 deaths, bringing the total to 1,463 in British Columbia.
The province has seen a ramp up in supply of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine and the arrival of the AstraZeneca vaccine recently, but the Moderna supply has not always been consistent.
For example, B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix noted that the province was expecting to receive 112,400 doses of Moderna this week but has so far only received 34,000 doses. The 138,060 Pfizer-BioNTech doses did arrive as expected this week.
The remaining 78,400 Moderna doses are expected this week, possibly on Saturday.
The next week’s delivery of Moderna is slated to be 111,900 doses.
“But when that changes or when delivery is delayed, it is an extraordinary challenge,” said Dix. “I think it’s a tribute to our teams that those changes have been dealt with seamlessly.”
ghoekstra@postmedia.com
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