Hospitals
Recent hospital closures:
- This press release (2024-08-20) announced that from Tuesday, 20 August to Wednesday 21 August at 8AM, the Mission Memorial Hospital will only be doing very basic first aid things for walk-in patients; patients with urgent/serious things were to be diverted to other hospitals.
- This article (2024-08-22) says that the Emergency Room Lillooet Hospital and Health Centre was closed from Wednesday 21 August at 7AM until Friday 23 August at 8AM.
- This article (2024-08-21) says that South Okanagan General Hospital in Oliver was closed mid-day on Wednesday 21 August, but not how long the closure would be. (Presumably the authors meant the ER, but they didn’t say that.)
- This article (2024-08-09) says that Nanaimo Regional General Hospital admitted patients on the BC Day weekend, but then gave them a notice saying that there wasn’t a doctor available to care for them.
- This older article (2024-06-21) says that the rate of patients giving up and going home before being seen is now double or triple the pre-pandemic levels.
Party!
The Clean Air Festival is happening in Vancouver on 15 September at Slocan Park (and livestreamed). It’s outdoors and N95-class masks are required!
First Nations
This article (2024-08-21) reports that Indigenous life expectancy in B.C. fell from 73.3 years in 2017 to 67.2 years in 2021. It fell for 6.8 years for men, and 5.2 years for woman. Some of that is due to drug overdoses, but some is from COVID-19. 🙁