From Saturday to Monday, B.C. saw 45 new COVID-19 cases, marking the lowest daily increase. But while things may start looking up, we are not out of the woods yet.
The province is now at 1,490 cases, with 25 of them detected between Saturday and Sunday. Between Sunday and Monday, B.C. saw 20 new cases.
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These days mark the lowest daily percentage increase since March 6th – when B.C. first began announcing new cases daily.
However, provincial health officer Bonnie Henry said mass testing is an ineffective strategy to slow COVID-19 transmission. That’s because the tests have a false negative rate as high as 30%.
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“The testing, unfortunately, doesn’t tell us the whole story. People can be negative one minute and positive within an hour,” Henry said, during a press conference, Monday.
Currently, the province is testing people with symptoms, who are already hospitalized, are working or living in care facilities, part of an outbreak investigation or healthcare workers.
However, microbiologist Craig Jenne, told CBC the 30% false negative result is worst case scenario.
Jenne explained there are a number of reasons why a test may not show accurate results, but it’s still the best way to give a snapshot of the pandemic in B.C.
“We can’t guarantee that the test is going to catch 100% of the infected people so we’re using it really as a confirmation of people with symptoms,” he said.
So far, Canada has 26,206 cases of the virus. B.C. still holds the highest recovery rate of COVID-19 cases in the country.
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