Nine New Cases Reported Today; Travel Guidance

Since we last reported, we have had 709 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 1,052 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 147 in the Island Health region, 149 in the Interior Health region, 33 in the Northern Health region and no new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.

One more person in the state has died of COVID-19, pushing the total number of deaths to 12,668.

There are now 8,490 active cases of coronavirus in the province, and public health is monitoring 11,989 people across B.C. who are in self-isolation because of COVID-19 exposure.

Monday's update was delivered in the form of a written statement from provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix, who urged the public to follow their guidelines and protect each other to the best of their abilities.

There are 8,490 active cases in the province, of which 318 people are hospitalized, with 96 in intensive care. There are 588 active cases of COVID-19 variants, or seven per cent of all active cases. "Of course, we'll have to see what happens tomorrow", Dix said Monday.

There have been 16,637 county residents who have recovered from the coronavirus with the 86 recoveries recorded Monday.

More than 890,000 doses of vaccine have been administered so far, 87,000 of which are second doses.

On Tuesday morning, the province's online vaccine registration portal is set to go live.

The provincial health officer released figures on Monday showing a jump of nearly 1,000 active cases of the disease each day over the past few days, with 8,490 people now sick. This includes 2,771 cases of the variant first found in the United Kingdom and 737 of the strain detected in Brazil, also known as P.1.

"The variants are not dissimilar to the rest of COVID-19".

Ten county residents are now hospitalized by COVID-19 and there have been 800 total hospitalizations with the fluctuation in hospitalizations and hospital discharges reported Monday.

It has been a week since B.C. announced temporary restrictions on indoor dining and indoor group fitness intended as a "circuit breaker" to stop the spread.

"I'm not one bit happy about where we are at now", Dix said.

He also acknowledged that a higher proportion of younger people are becoming ill from the disease.