Health Care System
This article says that 99.9% of people in BC who had surgeries rescheduled have now had them.
Mitigation Measures
This article reported that an appeals court said that yeah, prohibiting in-person church services was reasonable given the pandemic.
Statistics
As of today, the BC CDC weekly report said that in the week ending on 17 Dec there were: +609 confirmed cases, +167 hospital admissions, +28 ICU admissions, +22 all-cause deaths.
As of today, the weekly report said that the previous week (data through 10 Dec) there were: +659 confirmed cases, +214 hospital admissions, +31 ICU admissions, +45 all-cause deaths.
Last week, the weekly report said that in the week ending on 10 Dec there were: +659 confirmed cases, +171 hospital admissions, +28 ICU admissions, +27 all-cause deaths.
Last week, the weekly report said that the previous week (data through 3 Dec) there were: +539 confirmed cases, +195 hospital admissions, +37 ICU admissions, +31 all-cause deaths.
The BC CDC weekly report says that there are 349 in hospital / 35 in ICU as of 22 Dec 2022.
Non-COVID Respiratory Diseases
I occasionally take a glance at Lower Mainland Emergency Department wait times, and the wait time at Children’s Hospital has fallen pretty steeply. I saw a wait time as low as 40 minutes earlier this week, and it’s 2h on Thursday 22 Dec at 2pm. This is quite different from the 6+ hours which was routine a week or two ago. It might be lower because parents don’t want to drive in the snow, but the main roads appear to be relatively clear today, and the wait time is still down.
I know this is anecdata, but it’s the best anecdata I’ve got for what’s happening right this instant. (The flu report only covers up to 17 Dec 2021.)
From the BC CDC pathogen characterization page, it definitely looks like influenza has peaked. Adult non-COVID illnesses:
Richmond/North Shore/Vancouver non-COVID pediatric respiratory illness cases:
Note that while influenza has peaked, RSV looks like it is still increasing.
Only Children’s Hospital cases:
I’ll post the Washington State charts tomorrow.
COVID Charts
The BC CDC Dashboard isn’t going to update until tomorrow. I’ll post my case count/hospitalizations graph tomorrow.
The wastewater levels are all slowly trending slowly upwards. I’ll post Jeff’s charts tomorrow.
From the Situation Report page on 22 Dec 2022:
From the BC CDC Vaccination Coverage report as of 22 Dec (with data from 18 Dec):
From the BC CDC VOC report of 21 Dec 2022 (with data through 10 Dec):
That’s BQ.1.1 in the purple, starting to gain market share.