The good news: there were only 105 people in hospital on 13 April, which isn’t as low as the summer 2023 low or the low between Alpha and Delta, but it is lower that the low point between Delta and Omicron. Other indicators look flat or down slightly.
The bad news: this article reports that BC will switch to monthly reports after the May 2 update, like they did last year. (Wastewater will still be updated weekly, however.) I will obviously cut back on BC posts after that; I haven’t decided how much I will cut back on the General posts (especially since I’ll be putting H5N1 material in the General posts as well).
Vaccines
You will be glad to know that the friend I talked about in the last BC posting did get their shot! Also they wanted to correct what I said last time: it wasn’t that the pharmacist could deny based on it not being six months, it was that the pharmacist could deny because Friend “wasn’t old enough”. (That sounds awfully close to “Pharmacist could deny just because Pharmacist felt like it”.)
Statistics
As of 25 April, the BC CDC situation report says that in the week ending on 20 April there were: +252 reported cases, +70 hospital admissions, +10 ICU admissions, and +11 thirty-day all-cause deaths*.
In the week ending 13 April, they now report that there were +252 reported cases, +75 hospital admissions, +13 ICU admissions, and +20 thirty-day all-cause deaths*.
For comparison, in the previous update (2024-04-11) they reported that in the week ending on 13 April there were: +250 reported cases, +59 hospital admissions, +11 ICU admissions, and +8 thirty-day all-cause deaths*.
*All-cause deaths in people who had a positive COVID-19 test in the prior 30 days, that is.
There were 105 people in hospital and 5 in critical care with COVID-19 on 18 April.
Charts
From the BC CDC Situation Report:
From Jeff’s wastewater spreadsheet:
