B.C. health officials reported 1,506 new cases of COVID-19 over the past three days, along with 10 deaths.

There were 555 new cases from Friday to Saturday, 491 cases from Saturday to Sunday, and 460 cases from Sunday to Monday. Of the new cases, 382 were in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 840 were in the Fraser Health region, 75 were in Island Health, 80 were in Interior Health, and 129 were in Northern Health.

The 10 deaths bring the province’s COVID-19 death toll to 1,407 people.

Active cases were down slightly to 4,987 people, with 269 in hospital with 76 of those people in intensive care. A further 9,000 people are self-isolating due to possible exposure to COVID-19.

Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry also announced 163 new cases that have been confirmed retrospectively as variants of concern.

“That means of the total we’ve had in the last few months, 880 of those cases have been people who have been infected with one of these variants,” she said. “Of the total cases of variants, 195 are still active cases and the remaining are past the infectious period.”

Those cases include 818 of the B.1.1.7 (U.K.) variant, 41 B.1.351 (South Africa) variant, and 21 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant.

These latest case numbers come as mass COVID-19 vaccine clinics opened to the general public today, including in Kamloops. Yesterday, the province announced that British Columbians aged 80 to 84 can start booking their vaccination appointments this week, a week earlier than expected.

Henry also announced that small-scale outdoor religious services will soon return to the province, just ahead of Passover and Easter, which begin at the end of March and the beginning of April.

“I know how challenging it has been for many people not allowed to congregate with those in their faith communities,” Henry said. “We will be providing a class variance to allow outdoor religious services in small numbers in the coming days.”

In-person religious services have been banned since November. Henry says since then, her office has been working with Robert Daum, fellow and lead of diversity and innovation at Simon Fraser University as well as with other religious leaders on a plan for a return to in-person services.

Henry said the province is working on a ‘gradual and safe phased reopening of ongoing indoor services’ next month.

As it stands, there have been 409,103 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine administered across the province, including 87,059 second doses.

So far 81,890 people have recovered from COVID-19, about 92 per cent of the total.

More to come