2021-10-26 BC – Pandemic in British Columbia

Vaccines / Boosters

I got to the briefing late, but other sources say that BC will offer booster to the general population starting in January. There’s no need to register again — you’ll get contacted (just like you were for your first and second doses) between six and eight months after your second dose.

They will not have big megavax clinics; there will be more, smaller clinics for these vax. In some places, they will do all-of-community vaccinations.

Rant: I really wish Canada would give the THIRTEEN F MILLION doses sitting in Ottawa to those countries which haven’t gotten any vax instead of putting them into arms of people who have already gotten two. This is a fundamental injustice, and it’s also stupid: we won’t be safe until everybody is safe.

I wonder if Canada is not donating because of onerous contracts with the vaccine manufacturers. The Government of Canada could just choose not to respect the terms in the contracts which say limit its ability to sell/donate the 13M doses… but that might piss off the vax manufacturers, and it’s really important right now to not piss off the people who supply your life-preserving serum. 🙁

This article says that there’s a clinic giving third shots to people who need it for non-recreational travel to places which don’t recognize our doses. Work and “compassion” (which I am guessing is code for “funerals”) were listed as acceptable reasons to get a third shot.

Press Briefing

In addition to the boosters (covered above), the press briefing talked about:

Data issues: the hospitalization numbers were missing 204 cases in Interior Health (and only Interior Health) because uh because they got busy, apparently. The number currently hospitalized in Interior Health goes up from 23 to 63 associated with that data collection issue.
They are still working on figuring out how to count the people who are in hospital who came in for COVID-19 but are no longer infectious. It turns out to be a difficult problem. For example, do you count people who cleared their infection, left, and came back later? You have to review each patient’s records on a case-by-case basis.
Minister Dix gave numbers on how full the hospitals are. He talks fast, and so I’m not sure I got the numbers right, but I think he said that 2010 of 2553 surge beds are filled and 125 of 218 ICU surge beds are filled. That’s a lot, and that’s with flying people around to less-impacted hospitals. (They’ve flown 67 patients from Northern Health to hospitals in the south.)
- Dix said something like, “I don’t know if 67 sounds like a big number or a small number for you, but every single one of them is is someone who can’t breathe on their own, needs staff to move them, and then they are hundreds of miles from home.” Basically, it’s a huge f deal for each of those people.
Dix gave numbers about how many surgeries had been cancelled, but I didn’t catch them all and can’t be bothered to go watch the video to try to catch the numbers.
Today’s the day when long-term care home / assisted living staff who didn’t get vaxxed get fired. Dix emphasized that they would offer support (which I think means moving people around) to areas with critical shortages.
Today is also the day when unvaxxed health care workers (not in LTCH/AL) get put on unpaid leave. They also have two weeks to get vaxxed or get terminated.
The percent of HCW (who have worked at least one day) are unvaccinated, by HA, is:
- 7% in interior
- 5% in NH
- 2% in FH
- 2% Providence
- 2% VCH
- 2% PHSA
- 3% Island Health
Dix emphasized multiple times that firing the staff was a big deal, that they hoped some would reconsider and get vaxxed, that it was detrimental to the HCW, but that they had to do this to protect the patients and other staff.
Some places — especially diagnostic imaging and labs — might have to reduce their hours.
Dix said that they didn’t see a big difference in vax rates across categories (e.g. doctor vs. admin vs. tech vs. nurse) or specialties. He said it was pretty consistent. If, however, there were only ten people in a radiology lab and two were out, that would def be a problem.
He emphasized multiple times that all the staff in health care were important, and would be missed.
Dix was asked how many people in LTCH/AL had been terminated, and he said he didn’t have the exact number, but around 1800. He said that there were a fair number of “casual” workers who might not have worked very much.
One of the reporters pointed out that WHO had asked countries not to vaccinate people until next year, to which the response was, “oh, we’re not, we’re not vaccinating until January”. While technically true, I think that misses the point. I think WHO was saying, “doses should go into low-access countries’ arms and not high-access countries’ arms for the next few months”… and by not giving doses until January, DOES NOT HELP.