B.C. reports 536 new COVID-19 cases, seven deaths Thursday
- by Joy Garcia
- in Medicine
- — Jan 16, 2021
There are now four confirmed cases of the United Kingdom variant of COVID-19 in BC according to BC Health Officials.
The most recent was a traveller who returned to the Vancouver Coastal Health region. The latest case is in a returning traveler in the Vancouver Coastal Health region.
"There are no other contacts", Henry said.
Also, Henry says there are now four cases of the United Kingdom variant in the province, and she says officials don't believe it has spread beyond those people.
British Columbia has recorded its first case of the South African variant of COVID-19, although the Provincial Health Officer says that she doesn't think it poses a serious threat yet. The samples are randomly selected, but the focus is on areas with known cases of the variant, Henry said.
Henry said testing in B.C. indicates that the new variant does not appear to be widespread in the community.
Two more COVID-19 outbreaks were declared in the province's health-care system Thursday, both of which are located on the B.C. mainland.
She said it was "concerning" that it is, so far, unclear how the South African variant arose.
Cuba condemns United States for adding it to terrorism blacklist_china
Cuba was removed from the list in 2015 by then-president Barack Obama as he moved to normalize relations with the country. One of the reasons Pompeo cites for the designation is Cuba's support for Venezuelan President Nicola Maduro.
She noted the province is working on a strategy to improve its ability to detect variants.
"I am fairly confident that if we were seeing a lot of spread from one of these new variants, we would have picked it up", she said.
"The things we do to stop the spread work".
There are 4,624 active cases of COVID-19 in the province.
The highest single day of new cases since the pandemic started.
The number of active cases in the province also dropped again, to 4,624, the lowest it's been since November 8.
In most cases, the disease has been brought into care facilities by staff, according to Health Minister Adrian Dix.
That contrasted with 102 new cases in Vancouver Coastal Health, 115 in Interior Health, 45 in Northern Health, and 21 in Island Health.
