Very little evidence of community transmission in region: VCH

There is very little evidence of COVID-19 community transmissions in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, says Mark Lysyshyn, the deputy chief medical health officer at VCH.

“COVID-19 activity in the Vancouver Coastal Health region has decreased significantly and there is currently very little evidence of community transmission,” Lysyshyn said.

He made those remarks in a letter addressed to the schools in the VCH region.

Lysyshn said VCH believes the risk of COVID-19 in the school environment is low and that students and staff can safely return to in-class learning as per BC’s plan.

The letter was sent to school boards last week before schools re-opened for in-class instructions in province on June 1.

Lysyshn said although children are often at an increased risk for viral respiratory illnesses, that isn’t the case with COVID-19.

“Compared to adults, children are less likely to become infected with COVID-19, and are less likely to develop severe illness as a result of infection and less likely to transmit the infection to others,” he said.

He added that children who have developed COVID-19 have mostly acquired it from adults in the household setting.

Yesterday, Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer announced that there were no new outbreaks, and five outbreaks were declared over.

As of now, there are only two long-term care facilities in the VCH region where health authorities are still dealing with outbreaks. Those are Berkley Care Centre in North Vancouver and South Granville Park lodge in Vancouver.

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 904 COVID-19 cases in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 1,311 in the Fraser Health region, 127 in the Island Health region, 195 in the Interior Health region and 64 in the Northern Health region.

BC Government has a policy of not sharing data on the number of COVID-19 cases in each community.