2023-09-08 BC – COVID-19 in British Columbia

COVID-19 cases are increasing, by pretty much every measure.

Statistics

As of Sept 7, the BC CDC situation report says that in the week ending on 2 Sept there were: +447 reported cases, +119 hospital admissions, +17 ICU admissions, +12 thirty-day all-cause deaths*.

In the week ending 26 Aug, there were: +366 reported cases, +136 hospital admissions, +17 ICU admissions, +10 all-cause deaths*.

In the week ending 19 Aug, there were: +231 reported cases, +116 hospital admissions, +14 ICU admissions, +15 all-cause deaths*.

In the week ending 12 Aug, there were: +133 reported cases, +95 hospital admissions, +9 ICU admissions, +8 all-cause deaths*.

For comparison, in the previous update, it said that in the week ending 29 July there were: +152 reported cases, +50 hospital admissions, +10 ICU admissions, +7 thirty-day all-cause deaths*

On 7 Sept, there were 241 patients in hospital and 16 in critical care, while 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.

Testing

Okay. You’ve got a bunch of rapid tests whose boxes say they are either expired or close to expiry. Are they still good?

This page reports that Health Canada has extended the expiry dates. For the Artron tests (“blue box”), you can add six months to the expiry date printed on the box. For the Abbott Panbio (“green box”), you can use them until 24 months after the manufacture date.

(NB: You might not see a change. I have a “green box” which is labelled expiry date of 1/1/24 and manufacture date of 1/1/22, so there’s no extension. For some earlier tests, the boxes were printed before the approval for two years; my box clearly was printed after they gave it approval for two years.)

Judicial

This article says that a woman who refused to vaccinate her children (and then yanked them immediately when the childcare provider gave them five weeks’ notice to get vaxxed or get out) was not entitled to get a refund for those five weeks.

Health Care System

This article reports that the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s COVID-19 hospitalization numbers are quite a bit higher than BCCDC’s. BCCDC counts admissions, and until April 22 of this year, only counted first COVID-19 infections as measured by PCR. CIHI counted discharges (so the data is later) of documented and suspected cases.

This article says that Saanich Peninsula Hospital is having an outbreak, except that the hospital has not declared an outbreak, basically because they don’t want people to freak out. (Me, I think people should freak out.) Reading between the lines, it sounds like people are catching COVID-19 in the hospital.

At least the hospital has re-instituted mask mandates (and cleaning theatre, too).

This paper from BC reports that emergency department visits were down 15% in the first year of the pandemic; one-third of that drop was in kids, but there were also big drops in visits related to upper-respiratory illnesses (remember how nobody caught the flu when we all stayed home?), visits by the oldest adults (who maybe we afraid to go out?), and non-urgent visits. Later in the pandemic, volumes increased for highest-urgency visits, visits among children and visits related to ear, nose and throat.