Statistics
Wait, what???
There’s a note on the respiratory diseases page saying, “The final update of the respiratory season was on May 4. Respiratory updates will resume in the fall. COVID-19 reporting will continue through the summer.” I thought they were going to move updates to once per month, not stop them completely. ARG!
And today’s data doesn’t even include my favourite measure: how many people in the hospital right now have COVID-19. Waaaaaah!
One tiny bright spot: they say they are now reporting re-infections. But that means I don’t know how this week’s numbers compare with last week’s numbers. :-/
As of today, the BC CDC situation report says that in the week ending on 29 April there were: +636 reported cases, +175 hospital admissions, +16 ICU admissions, +42 thirty-day all-cause deaths*.
As of today, the situation report says that the previous week (data through April 22) there were: +530 reported cases, +172 hospital admissions, +16 ICU admissions, +28 all-cause deaths*.
Two weeks ago, the BC CDC weekly report said that in the week ending on 15 April there were: +519 reported cases, +152 hospital admissions, +27 ICU admissions, +19 thirty-day all-cause deaths*.
As of today, the weekly report said that the previous week (data through April 8) there were: +469 reported cases, +177 hospital admissions, +27 ICU admissions, +30 all-cause deaths*.
*All-cause deaths in people who had a positive COVID-19 test in the prior 30 days, that is.
Mitigation Measures
In a development that should surprise exactly nobody, this article reports that as soon as the mask mandate was lifted in care homes, there was an outbreak in VCH. It notes that the information did not come directly from VCH — it looks like it came from the families. (Meanwhile, Fraser Health is publishing info on current hospital / care home outbreaks here, yay Fraser Health!)
What was a surprise to me is that there are now some infected residents who are rooming with uninfected residents, and that this is allowed!!! That just seems whack to me.
This article reports that DoNoHarm BC had a protest near Minister Dix’ office calling for a resumption of mask mandates in health-care settings. I wish I had known.
Judicial
This article reports that a Kelowna pastor who got fined $2,300 for having a service in violation of Public Health orders lost his appeal.
This article reports that the first man in Canada approved for compensation for vaccine injury has filed suit against AstraZeneca and a long list of other people for the vaccine injury.
This article reports that a women who was being an asshole in a grocery store early in the pandemic — flouting signage, not respecting distancing, deliberately coughing on an employee, ramming another with her cart, all while yelling loudly and profanely that COVID-19 was not real — was convicted of assault and causing a disturbance
Economics
This article reports that the number of tourists in BC has gone up 147% from Feb 2022 to Feb 2023.
This article reports that Vancouver’s downtown is recovering slowly compared to other North American cities.
This article says that LifeLabs is marketing a battery of diagnostic tests as being for LongCOVID, but they are pretty run-of-the-mill tests. While I have seen a bunch of research papers which say they have found markers for Long COVID, those markers are not simple things to measure like Vitamin D, they’re things like IL-6, TNF-α, or the oxygen oxygen extraction ratio (which you need an exercise bike or treadmill for). Maaaaaybe the LifeLab battery of tests can rule things out, but that’s not exactly a Long COVID test.
Research
The province asks everybody in BC to please take the Survey on Population Experiences, Action, and Knowledge (SPEAK). (It’s quick and easy. The focus is not COVID-19, but there are a few questions about COVID-19.)
The COVID-19 Clinical Research Coordination Initiative (CRCI) is getting shut down, according to their web site. They ran:
- Consent to Contact database — a list of people who had tested positive for COVID-19 who agreed to be contacted by research projects. It’s reasonable that that service be shut down because so many people have had COVID-19 by now.
- Biobank Network — collecting, cataloging, and making available biological samples. This is still operational.
- REACH BC — a web site which gives people an easy way to volunteer for research. CRCI doesn’t say if it’s going to keep going or not, but the Reach BC website appears to still be active.
- The Long COVID clinics have been consolidated into a centralized virtual clinic.
- The Psychosocial Working Group appears to have been disbanded.
Charts
I don’t have adequate data to make nice charts for cases and hospitalizations any more. The data the province gives for hospitalizations always goes up considerably in following weeks, so I don’t trust it; the case data may be a lot bigger now because they are reporting re-infections and not just the first infections (plus they aren’t testing much at all).
From the BC CDC situation report as of 4 May:
