In the past two weeks, there have been 12 new cases of Covid-19 in the Northeast, nearly doubling the number of cases the region has seen.
Most of those cases are from people who attended a prayer retreat in Deadwood Alberta between July 30 and August 2.
The sharp spike in new cases has caused Northern Health to issue an exposure alert.
Northern Health has identified 17 confirmed cases, seven of which have recovered. 12 of those cases were people who directly attended the event, while five are people who were exposed to the people who attended the event.
24 people who were in contact with these people are currently in self-isolation.
Most of these cases are in the Fort St. John area, but not all.
If you or anyone you know attended the It is Time event in Deadwood, you may be at risk of secondary transmission. If so, Northern Health asks that you self-monitor, self-isolate, and seek testing if you have any symptoms.
Northern Health is continuing to contact individuals who may have been exposed, but are releasing this information to alert anyone who might have been at the event or in contact with anyone who might have been at the event.
Province-wide, there were 637 new cases in the last two weeks. As of August 14, there were 629 active cases. That’s edging close to the peak of 724 active cases on April 26.
Since the outbreak started, there have been 28 total cases in the Northeast and 106 in the North.
However, the province is not expected to enact similar measures as were taken at the start of the outbreak. Since the start of the outbreak, the province has hired 500 new contact tracers, tripling the number of people whose job it is to track down potential exposures in an effort to manage—not eliminate—the spread.
And, as the population affected is shifting away from the elderly and towards younger people, the number of people being hospitalized by the virus is not climbing. At its peak in April, there were 149 people in the hospital. While infection rates are nearly as high as they were in April, the number of people in the hospital as of August 14 was 12.
