B.C. has seen a worrisome uptick in new COVID-19 cases in recent days, prompting provincial health officer Bonnie Henry to warn that “we do risk a rebound.”
B.C. had 51 cases confirmed in a single day, between Friday and Saturday, and 102 between Friday and today.
“We have not had a hundred cases in a single time period (before),” Henry said. “This is worrying to us.
"We are starting to see an upward bend of our curve," Henry said. "What this shows is that we do have a possibility of having explosive growth in our outbreak here in B.C. if we're not careful in how we progress over the summer."
However, she added: "We still have it in our hands to make a difference of bending this curve."
Public health officials want to keep the virus' reproduction numbers -- the R function -- down to 1. That means only one other person gets infected. But in B.C. it has started to rise above 1, Henry said.
"That is concerning," she said. "That's the level, that 1, is where we can stop the outbreak. So we are at a place where we could see rapid progression of this virus, if we're not careful."
On a positive note, there have been no new deaths to report, and there is only one long-term care home with active cases. There were as many as two dozen long-term care homes with infection earlier this year.
Many of the new cases are among people in their 20s and 30s, and are related to social events and parties in the Kelowna area. Most worrisome, said Henry, is the fact that in some cases, those who tested positive would have had contact with a relatively large number of people.
Henry sketched out some findings of a recent epidemiological study that shows the fatality rate in B.C. is quite high -- 2.6%. That is no doubt related to the fact that the virus was most concentrated initially in long-term care homes. One in five people in long-term care homes have died from the virus, Henry said.
One of the biggest concerns right now is that too many people might be widening the social interactions too much.
"If we increase our social interactions without doing it safely, we do risk a rebound that will impact us all," she warned.
Henry added alerts have been issued for anyone who has flown recently in or out of Vancouver, Victoria and Kelowna. She said anyone who has flown recently in or out of B.C. should check the BC Centre for Disease Control for bulletins.
Henry sketched out the findings of a survey that her office conducted. It found a number of respondents reporting worsening mental health during the pandemic lockdown. It also found that young people were hardest hit by job losses.
Here are today’s COVID-19 numbers for Monday, July 20, with numbers from Friday July 17, the last reporting period, in brackets:
New cases: 102 (28)
Total: 3,300 (3,198)
Active cases: 253 (207)
Recovered: 2,858 (2,802)
Hospitalized: 16 (18)
Intensive care: 4 (2)
Deaths: 189 (189)
Confirmed cases by region:
Vancouver Coastal Health: 1,042
Fraser Health: 1,713
Island Health: 142
Interior Health: 280
Northern Health: 69
