B.C.’s total COVID-19 cases have grown by 53 over two days, totalling 2,224 as of Monday, May 4th, with 177 in the Interior Health region.
As well, provincial health authorities have offered updated modelling data on the virus.
Over the weekend, 34 new cases were reported between Saturday and Sunday, with an additional 19 between Sunday and Monday.
As for recoveries, 1,417 people are reported to be symptom-free, with 807 active cases remaining.
Three additional deaths have been added in B.C., raising the death toll to 117.
Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s Health Officer, said that so far, deaths have been mostly impacting the elderly.
“A majority of people who have died have been people in their 70’s, 80’s and over 90. We have also seen that over half of men over 90 have died, while it’s less than 20% for women,” said Henry. “This is a phenomenon that we’re seeing around the world, that men are more likely to have a more severe illness, require hospitalization, and die from COVID-19. We really don’t understand why, and there’s a lot of work going into understanding that.”
Henry added that young people are not immune, as people in their 20’s and 30’s have been hospitalized from the virus.
Dr. Henry said that there is some optimism, however, as the measures put in place by federal and provincial health authorities have been working.
“We had a dramatic increase in March, and when we started to put in our measures, we were still seeing cases go up, that’s because we know the incubation period is two weeks. When we first started to do our physical distancing, staying at home and closing a number of areas where we gather, all of those measures meant we started to see a decrease in new cases after two weeks,” said Henry.
Henry said that further details on the plan to move forward and possibly ease restrictions will be announced in Wednesday’s daily briefing.
