St. Mary's Catholic School and Prince George Secondary School are the latest Prince George schools to have a COVID-19 exposures, Northern Health reported on Friday.
The exposures at PGSS and the independent Catholic school took place on Dec. 1-2, according to information released by Northern Health. Shas Ti Kelly Road Secondary School and Heather Park Elementary School have both also had exposures this month.
During several of her regular public briefings, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has said exposure events at schools reflect what is happening in the broader community. However, she said, there has been very cases of COVID-19 being transmitted in schools.
Data released by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control on Thursday shows there was 63 new cases of COVID-19 in the Prince George local health area in the week of Nov. 29 to Dec. 5. The B.C. CDC began reporting weekly case data by local health area this week. Previously breakdowns by local health area were only available on a monthly basis.
The Prince George local health area includes Prince George, Mackenzie, McBride, Valemount and the surrounding areas as far north as Kwadacha and south to Hixon.
As of Nov. 30, there had been a total of 278 cases of COVID-19 in the Prince George local health area, the B.C. CDC reported.
The Northern Interior health service delivery area – which includes the Prince George, Quesnel, Nechako and Burns Lake local health areas – had 129 new cases between Dec. 4 and Thursday. Since January, there were 604 cases in the Northern Interior health service delivery area.
The other two areas that make up the Northern Health region – the Northwest and Northeast – had 53 cases and 37 cases, respectively, over the past two weeks.
Henry and B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix announced 41 new cases of COVID-19 in the Northern Health region in a joint statement issued on Friday afternoon. The new cases bring the total number of cases in the region, since the start of the pandemic, to 1,240.
"Today, we are reporting 737 new cases of COVID-19, including six epi-linked cases, for a total of 40,797 cases in British Columbia," Henry and Dix said. "There are 9,589 active cases of COVID-19 in the province. There are 342 individuals currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 87 of whom are in intensive care. "
The number of active cases in the north wasn't provided, but the B.C. CDC reported a record 421 active cases in the north on Friday. There were 46 northern B.C. residents hospitalized with COVID-19, including 17 in intensive care.
Public health officials were monitoring 12,008 British Columbians who had potential exposures to COVID-19.
"There have been 11 new COVID-19 related deaths, for a total of 598 deaths in British Columbia," they said. "COVID-19 continues to circulate in our communities and the risk to all of us remains high. This is why it is so important to follow the public health orders and to use our layers of protection until the vaccine is available for all of us."
None of the deaths reported on Friday were linked to the Northern Health region. The pandemic's death toll in the north remained at nine.
