A total of 424 people in British Columbia have tested positive for COVID-19 including 27 in Interior Health and 4 in Northern Health.
On Saturday, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said 74 new cases have tested positive for the disease. One additional person has died in relation to an outbreak at the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver bringing B.C.’s total death count up to 10.
“I think this tells us again that we have risk around the province and how important it is for us to pay attention to what’s happening in our community and take those measures that we have been talking about all along,” Henry said. “So this is not only confined to hospitals, to our healthcare sector, it’s also in our communities and the actions that we are taking today make a difference in how we can transfer this disease to others.”
All personal service establishments such as salons, spas, and massage parlors must now close until further notice as Henry said they require direct personal contact with other people and that it is impossible to deliver while maintaining appropriate distance.
“I know most of these businesses have closed but it’s come to my attention that there’s still confusion out there about whether they should be open or not,” Henry said. “We want to make it very clear that the expectation is that these will be closed.”
Of the positive cases in B.C. Henry said there are more people affected in the older age. She said there are very few people in the age 10 to 19 group, and that no one under the age of 10 at the moment is infected.
“We have a cluster of a group of people in their 30s to 40s, and that mostly reflects healthcare workers who are involved in clusters and it also represents up to 20 people now that have been associated with a dental conference that happened a few weeks ago here in BC,” Henry said. “So these tend to be younger, healthier people, but we also have a skew to the older people and again that represents the severity of this disease in older people and the outbreaks that we are seeing in our long-term care homes.”
Health Minister Adrian Dix said 27 people as of Saturday are in acute care and 12 are in intensive care.
“I think what I said yesterday and with what Dr. Bonnie Henry has said consistently is that we require 100 percent compliance,” Dix said. “We need everyone to comply. Most of these measures are orders; they’re also enforceable orders, they’re orders of the provincial health officer.”