This is going to be brief because I’m still superbusy. (There’s no accompanying General post today, sorry.)
Vaccinations
This article reports that Canada is still in the approval process for the fall booster update vax. I assume we’ll get the same shots as the US gets, which this article says are going to be monovalent XBB 1.5.
The province will start the fall booster update campaign when it gets approved, which will probably be late September or early October.
Wastewater
From Jeff’s spreadsheet with data from Metro Van through 31 July:
Maybe going up? Maybe holding steady? Maybe going down? Hard to tell.
Statistics
As of Aug 3, the BC CDC situation report says that in the week ending on 29 July there were: +152 reported cases, +50 hospital admissions, +10 ICU admissions, +7 thirty-day all-cause deaths*.
In the week ending July 22, there were: +147 reported cases, +50 hospital admissions, +8 ICU admissions, +9 all-cause deaths*.
In the week ending July 15, there were: +144 reported cases, +60 hospital admissions, +8 ICU admissions, +5 all-cause deaths*.
In the week ending July 8, there were: +173 reported cases, +72 hospital admissions, +13 ICU admissions, +12 all-cause deaths*.
For comparison, in the previous update, it said that in the week ending on 1 July there were: +184 reported cases, +61 hospital admissions, +11 ICU admissions, +5 thirty-day all-cause deaths
On 3 Aug, there were 76 patients in hospital and 7 in critical care.
*All-cause deaths in people who had a positive COVID-19 test in the prior 30 days, that is.
Charts
From the BC CDC Situation Report as of 6 July:
Whole Genome Sequencing:
The majority of the samples are now “recombinants”, which are strains where two parent strains swapped genetic material, making a strain which has mutations from both. Recombinants by their nature can end up with a lot of mutations (compared to their parents), so have the potential to be scary. (Omicron apparently was the result of a recombination!)
