Four people with coronavirus in B.C. getting better, health officer
Credit to Author: Stephanie Ip| Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2020 22:10:03 +0000
All four people infected with the coronavirus are recovering, according to B.C. health officials.
They said Tuesday that there were no new cases of COVID-19, as the new virus has been named, in the province since three were confirmed last week, in addition to the one case previoulsy confirmed.
“Their condition is stable and all of them are in isolation recovering at home,” said Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer. The individuals will be cleared by health officials only after testing negative on two tests, 24 hours apart.
“I also want to say that the small number of close contacts for each of our cases has been identified and are being actively followed every day with Vancouver Coastal Health and they all remain well and asymptomatic.”
As of Friday, 371 samples from B.C. had been tested for coronavirus, said Henry. The vast majority of them do not have the virus but Henry said the threshold for deciding to do the test is intentionally kept low.
Henry said the test results that did return a positive result are for other viruses common at this time of year, such as influenza.
A second government flight repatriating Canadian citizens and residents from Wuhan, China, touched down in Vancouver Monday evening for refuelling before continuing to Canadian Forces Base Trenton in Ontario.
Henry said 188 people were on board and that there were no issues during the Vancouver stopover. Those individuals will remain quarantined at the Trenton base for 14 days.
The update comes following the World Health Organizations daily media briefing earlier in the day, during which WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the virus had been given a name: COVID-19.
“Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatizing,” said Tedros. “It also gives us a standard format to use for any future coronavirus outbreaks.”
As of Tuesday morning, the WHO reported 42,708 confirmed cases in China, where reported deaths now number more than 1,000. Outside of China, there are 393 cases in 24 countries and just one death.