B.C. health ministry to provide update on novel coronavirus Thursday
Credit to Author: Postmedia News| Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2020 00:37:53 +0000
B.C.’s health officials are set to share an update on novel coronavirus.
Health Minister Adrian Dix, along with B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, will speak on COVID-19 at a teleconference at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday.
No further details have been released at this time.
Just a day earlier, health officials said the first British Columbian to be tested positive for COVID-19 had been cleared of the virus and permitted to leave isolation, after giving two negative test results 24 hours apart.
The man in his 40s first contracted the virus after travelling to Wuhan and had been in isolation at home to recover.
At the time Thursday’s teleconference was announced, there were four other COVID-19 cases still in isolation and recovering.
Three of the four cases involved one family, in which two relatives from Wuhan, China had flown to B.C. to visit a Vancouver-based family member. One of the two visitors is believed to have infected the Vancouver resident, who was the first of the three to report their illness to health authorities, before the two visitors were also tested and found to be infected.
The fourth remaining case was a woman in her 30s who lived in the B.C. Interior.
As of Thursday, the World Health Organization said there were 75,748 confirmed cases globally, with 548 new cases reported in the past 24 hours. The majority of those cases are in China, with 2,121 deaths recorded to date in the country.
Outside of China, there have been eight deaths across 26 countries. In Canada, there have only been eight cases to date, with only one case being transmitted outside of China. There have been no deaths due to COVID-19 in Canada.