As new COVID-19 infections continue to rack up in B.C., and as the province's death toll from the disease rises, health officials are promising that the province's vaccination campaign is slated to ramp up.
Another 874 British Columbians were diagnosed as having COVID-19 in the past day.
By health region, here is where the infections took place:
• 187 in Vancouver Coastal Health (21.4%);
• 574 in Fraser Health (65.7%);
• 29 in Island Health (3.3%);
• 60 in Interior Health (6.9%); and
• 24 in Northern Health (2.7%).
There are 503 COVID-19 patients in B.C. hospitals, with a record 178 having illnesses severe enough to be in intensive care units.
"The vast majority of people in hospital right now are not related to COVID-19," Health Minister Adrian Dix said. :In fact, the numbers in acute care provincewide are fairly stable."
One person in the Interior Health region has died from the disease in the past day, raising the province's death toll from COVID-19 to 1,577.
Not all data was provided at an afternoon news conference, but information on active infections, the number of those under active health monitoring, the number of people the province considers to have recovered and other information is expected to come later this afternoon.
No new data was provided on the spread of mutant variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, but provincial health officer Bonnie Henry estimated that "around 75% of cases" are variants.
Dix and Henry addressed how the province's vaccination campaign is set to accelerate thanks to increased supply of doses.
The province has not set a record for the number of doses administered in a 24-hour period since April 16, when officials provided 46,227 jabs in arms.
Henry said B.C. will get its first doses of Johnson & Johnson's Janssen vaccine next week.
B.C. received 138,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine this week. The size of next week's shipment, however, is set to double, and be 276,000 doses each week through the end of May. The province is expected to get more than one million doses of this vaccine in May, according to Henry.
The province also expects to get another shipment of Moderna vaccine in mid-May.
Health officials provided 43,966 doses of vaccine to 43,395 people in the past 24 hours, with 571 people getting needed second doses.
In total, since officials provided B.C.'s first vaccine dose on December 16, there have been 1,749,375 doses provided to 1,659,079 people, with 90,296 others getting needed second doses.
Henry was asked at the afternoon news conference if she would apologize for what some consider a botched roll-out of pop-up clinics that were supposed to be exclusively for people aged 30 years old and older, who live in COVID-19 hot spots. People lined up for hours at a pop-up clinic in Coquitlam, which is not a hot spot, with many getting doses of vaccine even if they did not reside in a hot spot.
"I absolutely apologize to people for for the miscommunications and for the confusion," Henry said.
She said that the "vast majority" of vaccine doses are steered toward the province's age-based vaccination program, for which people aged 58 years old and older are eligible to book appointments. A separate vaccine roll-out stream is done through participating pharmacies. Pop-up clinics is a third way vaccines are being provided. Those clinics are intended to provide vaccines to people who live in areas with a high level of transmission, and to those in specific occupations.
New B.C. COVID-19 infections stay high as vaccinations set to accelerate - Alaska Highway News
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