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There are now 68 people hospitalized with an active case of COVID-19 in B.C., an increase of 16 from Friday’s number.

Hospitalizations rise as vaccine interval shortened

Published 3:35 PDT, Mon August 9, 2021

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There are 68 people in hospital with an active case of COVID-19 in B.C., an increase of 16 from Friday’s number and the highest in a month.

Provincial heath officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said today that while there has been a recent surge in cases, the province is not seeing younger people hospitalized at a higher rate than when other variants were circulating. And she expects that, at least in the short term, most people will not require a third dose of vaccine for added protection. The vast majority of the cases, she said, are still in people who are not fully vaccinated.

“We’re not seeing the widespread increased transmission of a few months ago, that’s a reflection of high immunization rates,” she said.

Henry also announced that the interval between first and second vaccine dose will be shortened to 28 days or four weeks. But the recommendation from the province continues to be that people not living or working in high-transmission communities wait six to eight weeks between doses.

People who are more than 28 days past their first dose should receive a notification in the coming days, but because of the high volume these will not all be sent out at once, said Health Minister Adrian Dix. The system sends out about 5,000 per hour.

B.C. health authorities reported 1,079 new cases of COVID-19 since Friday. Since the pandemic began, B.C. has recorded 152,918 cases.

Of the new cases, 142 are in the Vancouver Coastal Health region (including Richmond), 258 in the Fraser Health region, 62 in the Island Health region, 587 in the Interior Health region, 30 in the Northern Health region and no new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.

There are 3,036 active cases of COVID-19 in B.C. and of the 68 people who are hospitalized, 20 are in intensive care.

To date, 7,067,738 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in B.C.; 3,257,931 of those are second doses.

This means that 82.9 per cent of adults and 82 per cent of people aged 12 and older have received their first dose of a vaccine. In addition, 72.2 per cent of adults and 70.3 per cent of those aged 12 and older have received two doses.

Anyone who received a vaccine dose outside B.C. can go online and upload the information about that immunization. People need their personal health number, an image of their official vaccination record and personal contact information, and the process should take less than five minutes.

Sadly, there were five new virus-related deaths reported since Friday, bringing that total to 1,777.

Health authorities reported one new healthcare facility outbreak. There are now active outbreaks at seven long-term care facilities.

For the latest medical updates, including case counts, prevention, risks and to find a testing centre near you: http://www.bccdc.ca/ or follow @CDCofBC on Twitter.