VICTORIA — British Columbia s premier and health minister refused to directly answer questions Wednesday about the government s contract with Telus, the provider whose call centres for COVID-19 . . .
British Columbia's premier and health minister refused to directly answer questions Wednesday about the government's contract with Telus, the provider whose call centres for COVID-19 vaccine appointments got off to a chaotic start.
Health officials test for variants after they have initially detected that an individual has COVID-19, so all newly determined variant cases were not necessarily cases that were discovered overnight. Nonetheless, B.C. reported that officials had discovered overnight 51 new COVID-19 cases that are variants of concern, for a total of 627 cases. Of the people who have been infected with a variant strain, 109 are actively battling infections, while 518 individuals have recovered. The B.1.1.7 (U.K.) variant is the dominant variant strain in B.C., with 580 total cases, while there are 33 cases of the B.1.351 (South Africa) variant, and 14 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant, provincial health officer Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix said in a joint statement.
Active cases of COVID-19 in Northern Health declined for a third day in a row but the virus also claimed one more life, according to B.C. Centre for Disease Control numbers issued Wednesday.
On the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring that the spread of COVID-19 constitutes a global pandemic, B.C. continues to show evidence that the virus is not yet under . . .