WHAT HAPPENED: B.C. on April 3 reported 53 infections and four deaths as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the past 24 hours, resulting in a total of 35 deaths and 1,174 infections.
Why this matters: Although the rate of new infections is slowing, the number of infections and deaths keeps rising, showing that the pandemic is still a serious issue and government regulations aimed at keeping people at home (and businesses closed) will stay in place for the foreseeable future.
--When B.C. officials relayed their daily accounting of COVID-19 infections and deaths April 3, the good news was that there has been a reduction in hospitalizations. There are now 146 people in hospital, down by three people from April 2. Of those, 64 are in the intensive care unit.
The bad news, aside from the four new deaths, is that the number of seniors' care homes in which there has been at least one infection has risen by one, to 22. Neither provincial health officer Bonnie Henry nor Health Minister Adrian Dix revealed the name of that 22nd seniors' home. Henry said, however, that in total there have been 176 infections in care homes, including two large outbreaks: at North Vancouver's Lynn Valley Care Centre and at Vancouver's Haro Park Centre. She last provided a full breakdown on how many cases were in each home on March 26. Back then, Lynn Valley Care Centre had 70 cases while Haro Park Centre had 58. The "vast majority" of the cases at care homes are still in those facilities, she said April 3.
Henry said that she is "heartened" that recent outbreaks at care homes have been of a single case.
The number of COVID-19 infections broken down by health region are:
—541 in Vancouver Coastal Health;
—412 in Fraser Health;
—74 in Island Health;
—126 in Interior Health; and
—21 in Northern Health.
There have been 641 people that the government considers to have fully recovered.
@GlenKorstrom
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