B.C. announced 556 new COVID-19 cases and no new deaths Tuesday (March 16), according to provincial health officials.

The count breaks down to 139 new cases in the Vancouver Coastal Health authority region, 331 in Fraser Health, 27 in Island Health, 16 in Interior Health and 41 in Northern Health.

Two new cases were reported in people residing outside of Canada. In addition, 116 of the COVID-19 cases were linked to variants of concern for a total of 996 in the province.

There are now a total of 4,999 active cases, this includes 280 people being treated in hospital for the virus. Of them, 84 are being treated in intensive care.

In a joint statement, officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix said 424,517 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in B.C., 87,070 of which were second doses:

鈥淎lready, we have been able to accelerate availability for older citizens and we hope to be able to continue to push forward at this pace.鈥�

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鈥淲e are starting to turn the dial to restart activities that have been on pause, starting with outdoor activities that are safer. We must continue to be cautious in our approach to achieve the right balance 鈥� moving slowly to ensure we don鈥檛 give the virus the opportunity to surge,鈥� officials said.

There were no new health facility outbreaks reported as a result of the virus.

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sarah.grochowski@bpdigital.ca
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