The BC COVID-19 Modelling group has issued its 26th report. It’s worth a read.
Here’s their excess mortality update (see p7):
They think that case rates are going to go down in BC due to increasing population-level immunity (because everybody has already gotten sick), but they aren’t sure about their model because they say that hospitalizations don’t count re-infections. I thought the province had said that the hospitalizations counted everybody who had COVID-19 (hospitalized both for and with COVID-19), so now I’m confused again.
They do a bunch of analyses to say that the fall wave wasn’t due to BQ.1.1’s immune evasiveness as much as it was to waning immunity. (What this means: GET ANOTHER BOOSTER!)
Mitigation Measures
This BC CDC web page says that starting 17 November 2022, there is no requirement to isolate after you catch COVID-19. None. It goes out of its way to say that if you are asymptomatic, there is no limit to what you are allowed to do.
This article says that the province determined that 95% of a subset of the files audited for compliance with the rules for B.C. Emergency Benefit for Workers were ineligible because they could not prove they filed a 2019 tax return. I have two thoughts: 1) Why do the taxpayers have to do the proving, doesn’t the province know if they filed a return? and 2) HOW CAN 95% OF ANY SAMPLE NOT FILE THEIR TAX RETURNS? Are those people actually humans, or are they fakes?
Adult Hospitals
This article says that last week, Provincial Health Services Authority said that it tested all respiratory patients to see what illness they had. This article says that somebody was in a hallway for two weeks, caught COVID-19 there, which prompted Island Health to say the moral equivalent of “oh actually we only test when we feel like it’s needed”. (He entered the hospital for something non-respiratory, so maybe they didn’t think they had to test him? But when he told a staff that he had respiratory issues, they blew him off, saying everybody had colds these days.)
This article says that Island Health has more ER visits/admissions now than in the previous four years:
Pediatric Hospitals
This article says that children’s hospitals in BC are getting slammed. One explanation for the discrepancy between what the data I’ve been seeing says and what this article says is that only at-risk kids are getting tested. Great.
This article says that BC Children’s Hospital has set up an overflow unit for pediatric ER.
Okay, it looks like the distribution of pediatric infections is wickedly, WICKEDLY non-uniform. From the BC CDC Pathogen Characterization Report, the graph of infections for kids overall in BC just doesn’t look that bad compared to last year:
However, if you only look at Children’s Hospital (in Vancouver), it does look like it is spiking (although only to about the same level as last year):
Note: parents might be seeking more/earlier care this year because there’s a shortage of fever-reducing medications at the moment.
Statistics
As of today, the BC CDC weekly report said that in the week ending on 19 Nov there were: +498 confirmed cases, +144 hospital admissions, +23 ICU admissions, +21 all-cause deaths.
As of today, the weekly report said that the previous week (data through 12 Nov) there were: +484 confirmed cases, +189 hospital admissions, +36 ICU admissions, +41 all-cause deaths.
Last week, the BC CDC weekly report said that in the week ending on 12 Nov there were: +487 confirmed cases, +144 hospital admissions, +33 ICU admissions, +30 all-cause deaths.
Last week, the weekly report said that the previous week (data through 5 Nov) there were: +407 confirmed cases, +159 hospital admissions, +26 ICU admissions, +40 all-cause deaths.
The BC CDC dashboard says that there are 328 in hospital / 37 in ICU as of 24 November 2022.
Charts
From the BC CDC Situation Report for week 45 (ending 12 Nov):
From the BC CDC Variants of Concern report through 17 Nov:
Hey! UBC monitors wastewater also! They normalize with PMMoV, a virus in peppers. Because people eat peppers at a pretty consistent rate, this provides a good way of dealing with different water levels (due to e.g. rain) and different people levels (due to e.g. vacations).
