Most of the 55 cases of COVID-19 that the BC Centre for Disease Control has identified in the past 24 hours have been community outbreaks at either poultry-processing plants or at the the federal medium-security facility Mission Institution, B.C.'s provincial health officer Bonnie Henry said April 28.
There are now 46 cases at Coquitlam's Superior Poultry Processing Ltd. and 34 cases at East Vancouver's United Poultry Co. Ltd.
At Mission Institution, 120 inmates and 12 staff have contracted the novel coronavirus.
Henry said that the rise in the number of cases at those outbreaks could in part because there has been so much testing.
"Everybody at the Mission facility has been tested now," she said. "That is our protocol that we've been using at long-term care homes, for example, and actually at the poultry outbreaks as well."
She added that negative tests are "not necessarily helpful" because somebody who was exposed to somebody with COVID-19, and if they are still in the incubation period, they could test negative today, and develop symptoms and test positive tomorrow.
"It doesn't mean that we've stopped monitoring and making sure that we're doing health assessments on a regular basis or stopped isolating somebody who has been a close contact of somebody," she said.
The province has had a total of 2,053 cases of the virus that has spawned a global pandemic, with 1,231 of those people now fully recovered. There are 717 people actively fighting infections.
The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases by health region are:
• 803 in Vancouver Coastal Health;
• 918 in Fraser Health;
• 119 in Island Health;
• 168 in Interior Health; and
• 45 in Northern Health.
There remain 20 seniors' long-term care homes or assisted living facilities that have active outbreaks, and 12 homes where the outbreak has been declared over. There have been 391 cases related to those homes, either in residents or workers.
Most of the province's 105 deaths have been related to those facilities.
A total of two deaths have been recorded in the past 24 hours.
