New COVID variant identified in B.C.

A third variant of the COVID-19 virus has been identified in B.C.

On a day when the province announced 445 new cases of the virus, provincial health officer Dr. Bonny Henry said the new variant – B1.525 - is associated with travel to or from Nigeria. So far, just one case has been found in B.C. and that person had returned from a trip to the country on the west-central coast of Africa.

“We aren’t entirely clear yet whether this variant also has increased transmissibility or causes more severe illness, but our lab team is working with their counterparts in Canada and internationally to get a better understanding of what this can mean,” Henry said.

“The emergence of these variants of course makes us all concerned here in B.C. They’ve shown in many place around the world that the do confer an advantage in that these viruses tend to spread more quickly and now (there is) more evidence that they might cause more severe illness.”

So far in B.C. 46 confirmed cases of variant strains of the virus have been identified, including 29 cases of the B1.1.7 variant originally found in the United Kingdom and 17 of the B 1.351 variant associated with South Africa.

The B C. Centre for Disease Control has been conducting a point prevalence assessment study which screened every positive COVID case between Jan. 30 and Feb. 5 with a genetic marker to determine how many cases have the variant. Of the 3,099 confirmed positive cases just three (0.1 per cent) had the variant.

“This is reassuring, it tells us that we don’t have high levels of transmission in our communities but we still need to be cautious and continue to monitor,” said Henry.

Of the 445 new cases of COVID-19 since Thursday, 30 are in the Northern Health region, bringing the total number of cases in the province to 72,750. There are now 4,347 active cases and 226 people in hospital with the virus and 61 of those patients are being treated in intensive care or critical care. Ten more people died, raising the death toll to 1,288 since the pandemic began last March. The number of people now recovered has reached 67,008 and 7,035 people are currently being monitored by the province.

So far, the province has given out 162,982 first doses of vaccine and 17, 562 second doses.

Henry said the vaccine are working and senior residents of care homes are proving how effective the immunization program has been in slowing transmission rates and outbreaks, despite supply issues. The province expects to take delivery of 55,000 new doses of the Pfizer vaccine next week.

“As we know in the past couple weeks we’ve had very limited vaccine supply but thankfully starting next week deliveries of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will start to resume at much higher levels and we expect to have a significant bump in supply in the coming weeks,” said Henry. “This will allow us to fully resume our provincewide immunization program, focusing as we have been in Phase 1 on those who are highest risk of severe illness and death, and front-line health-care workers.

“Very soon we’ll be able to expand into the community groups, particularly our seniors and elders. We’ve also seen a notable decrease in transmission and outbreaks in long-term care and assisted living facilities as immunization has rolled out. This is clear evidence of the effectiveness of the vaccine and extremely encouraging news and I know a relief to everybody who has family member in care homes.”

Henry reminded everyone not to let down their guard as we head into the Family Day long weekend and said the downward trend of COVID cases and progress made to fight the virus will only continue of BC residents remain vigilant about taking the required precautions keep up their personal protection habits and avoid gatherings beyond household members.

“Once we have a lot of vaccine (and it is) more and more likely that we’re going to be able to immunize larger numbers of people by the summer, I think we’ll be in a very different place, and we’ll get back to small gatherings,” she said. “But we don’t yet know how long the protection from each individual vaccine series is going to last. There’s a possibility we might need boosters at some point in the future and that’s why it’s important to start planning for altering vaccines. The messenger RNA vaccines are ones that can be changed fairly easily. But whether that will be yearly, like we’ve seen with influenza or whether that might be every three to five years we don’t know that.”

Manitoba premier Brian Pallister announced Thursday that province’s intent to buy two million doses of an vaccine made in Alberta by Providence Therapeutics. When asked if B.C. would consider a similar purchase of domestic vaccine, Health Minister Adrian Dix said Friday that is a possibility.

“Certainly we’re interested in anything in the long run that would create stronger domestic capacity and I know Dr. Henry and I will be meeting with the company as well on that question to take a look at that,” said Dix. “But right now we’re focusing on the immunization of 4.3 million British Columbians, which is our priority this week.”

There are three active outbreaks Northern Health is currently monitoring, including the Brucejack Mine north of Stewart, which has at least 22 positive cases in the camp of 485 workers since the outbreak was declared on Wednesday. There are seven active cases at the Dawson Creek and District Hospital medical inpatient unit, since that began Feb. 7. In Prince Rupert, the Acropolis Manor care home has had 31 patients and 20 staff test positive for COVID-19. Twelve residents have died since the outbreak began Jan. 19.

Both outbreaks at University Hospital of Northern B.C. in Prince George have ended. The outbreak was Thursday at Jubilee Lodge long-term care facility which started on Dec. 12 was declared over on Thursday, after 48 patients and 14 staff became infected. Seventeen residents died as a result of that outbreak.  On Wednesday Northern Health medical officers declared an end to the outbreak at UHNBC’s internal medicine unit. That began Jan. 29, resulting in the infections of 21 patients and 12 staff members and nine deaths.