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B.C. adds 148 cases of COVID-19 as active caseload drops below 2,000

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B.C. health officials announced 148 new cases of COVID-19 and three related deaths in their update on the pandemic Wednesday.

There are now fewer than 2,000 active cases of the coronavirus in the province for the first time since Oct. 22. There were 1,975 active cases as of Wednesday’s update.

Hospitalizations also dropped below 200 again, with 195 people hospitalized, 47 of them in intensive care.

Wednesday's update came in the form of a written statement from provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix.

There have now been 145,843 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in B.C. since the pandemic began, and 1,725 deaths.

The 148 cases added to the total on Wednesday bring the province's rolling seven-day average for new infections to 168.

Continued downward trends in active cases and daily case rates are prerequisites for B.C. moving to step two of its restart plan, which is scheduled to happen on June 15 at the earliest.

Earlier this week, health officials indicated that B.C. was on track to hit that date.

Vaccination rates are also a key factor in determining the province's progress toward fully reopening.

As of Wednesday, B.C. had administered a total of 3,749,758 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines, 390,264 of which are second doses.

Those totals mean 74.5 per cent of B.C. residents ages 18 and older have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, as have 72.4 per cent of British Columbians ages 12 and older.

“Canada has some of the highest dose-one immunization levels in the world and British Columbia is equally strong," Henry and Dix said in their release. "We ask everyone to join us in continuing to push forward with our vaccine progress."

MORE NEW CASES IN INTERIOR THAN VANCOUVER COASTAL HEALTH

The Lower Mainland has long been the epicentre of coronavirus cases in B.C., but as vaccination rates have improved and hotspots have cooled, the number of new cases being recorded in the Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Health regions has declined significantly.

On Wednesday, the province announced just 23 new cases in Vancouver Coastal Health, a total lower than the 32 new cases found in Interior Health over the last 24 hours.

It's not the first time Interior Health has recorded more cases in a day than Vancouver Coastal Health, but it has been a rarity over the course of the pandemic. As of Tuesday, the seven-day rolling average for new cases in the two health authorities was nearly identical, according to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control's pandemic dashboard

Vancouver Coastal Health's rolling average was 33.1 on Tuesday - the most recent day for which the calculation is available on the dashboard - while Interior Health's was 33.9.

Elsewhere in the province on Wednesday, Fraser Health added 75 new cases, Island Health added 10 and Northern Health added eight. 

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