week ending 2022-09-29 BC – Pandemic in British Columbia

Statistics

This week’s BC CDC weekly report said that in the week ending on 24 September August there were: +635 cases, +150 hospital admissions, +30 ICU admissions, +16 all-cause deaths.

This week’s report said that the previous week (data through 17 September) there were: +636 cases, +203 hospital admissions, +29 ICU admissions, +31 all-cause deaths.

Last week’s BC CDC weekly report said that in the week ending on 17 September August there were: +637 cases, +155 hospital admissions, +27 ICU admissions, +22 all-cause deaths.

Last week’s report said that the previous week (data through 10 September) there were: +574 cases, +180 hospital admissions, +31 ICU admissions, +26 all-cause deaths.

The BC CDC dashboard says that there are 367 in hospital / 30 in ICU as of 29 September 2022.

Press Conference

There was a press conference yesterday (28 Sep) which was about fall plans. The province is metaphorically soiling itself worrying about the possibility of COVID and influenza hitting at the same time.

Here are some highlights from what Dr. Henry said:

~40% of the people in the hospital with COVID-19 are there for COVID.
We’re likely to see more Omicron. We’re unlikely to see a new strain that completely evades all of our immunity.
New hospitalizations over the past two months have pretty much followed the “increase of 20% in person-to-person contact” that they modelled (graph below). If you say so? Looks like a drop, not a hump to me. True, it is not worse than the 20% guess.
About 97% of the population has antibodies, either from vax or infection or both (see chart below).
They are going to do more wastewater monitoring. They’ve lined up Comox, Victoria, Nanaimo, Kelowna, Nelson, Kamloops, and are in discussions with Prince George, Terrace, Ft. St. John, and Prince Rupert.
You can use RATs to provide adequate proof to get Paxlovid. (I saw this recently. My neighbour got her Paxlovid quite promptly with just a phone call to her doctor. Her husband’s prescription took a day because of concern about drug interactions, which meant a deeper consultation between pharmacist and doctor.)
The flu vax will be here by 11 October, everybody get one!

Light purple is people who got an infection.

The light purple is people who have been infected.

Dix said:

Modelling says we might get another 700 COVID patients in the coming months. (I wasn’t clear if he meant a PEAK of patients, or total.)
Influenza projections suggest a peak of up to 1200 patients. (I think this is not all at the same time.)
Influenza is “peakier” than COVID — sharper up, shorter duration, sharper down.
They are working on getting 1500 more bed spaces (if needed) in the late fall through early Spring.
- 500 people now in hospital are waiting for LTCH placement. (I don’t know what the holdup is, and what would make the holdup go away.)
- 1300 people now in hospital could be cared for “in the community”. (I don’t know what “in the community means” — is it a euphemism for “dump on the family”?)
- They are working at identifying who they can ~~kick out of hospital~~ transfer to community if they need to. They think they could reduce hospitalization by 40-60% that way.
- New Vista Care Home (in Burnaby) has been refurbished, and that’s one place they could send people. (There was no talk about where staff for the reopened New Vista Care Home would come from.)
- They plan to have 7-day-per-week “bed management” teams. I think that this team will make decisions about who to fly where to balance load. It was clear from a question in Q&A that they would move patients before moving health care workers.
- Service reductions (i.e. cancelling surgeries) would be a last resort.
- GO GET YOUR FLU SHOTS AND COVID BOOSTERS!

This provincial press release talks about plans for general improvements to provincial health care: a second med school, enhanced powers for pharmacists and paramedics, more funding for family docs, and more.