More British Columbians being hospitalized due to COVID

More British Columbians are being hospitalized due to COVID

By Moira Wyton, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

British Columbia’s health minister says the province’s hospital capacity remains strong despite a significant rise of people  hospitalized due to COVID-19 over the weekend.

Approaching numbers of first wave

There are currently 133  people in hospital across B.C., with 43 in critical or intensive care,  up from 100 in hospital and 31 in critical care on Friday.

These numbers are nearing the highest seen  since the pandemic’s first wave in B.C., when hospitalizations peaked at  149 with 68 in critical care on April 2.

375 beds ready to be mobilized

Across the province, there are 375 vacant  critical-care beds ready to be mobilized for COVID-19 patients, said  Health Minister Adrian Dix.

Since Saturday, there have  also been five new deaths and 998 new cases identified, of which 737  cases are in the Fraser Health region and 210 are in Vancouver Coastal  Health.

Provincial health officer  Dr. Bonnie Henry says these numbers reflect transmission from one week  to 10 days ago, and the effects of her recent orders to limit social gatherings,  travel and indoor exercise in the Lower Mainland won’t be seen until next week at the earliest.

“This is still a challenging situation and  [the numbers explain] in part why Dr. Henry took the actions that she  did on Saturday,” said Dix. “While these new orders are not what we  want… after all we’ve been through, we need to move fast.”

Vaccines

News of promising results from one of the  vaccines on order from the Canadian government also offers hope for  another method to protect the most vulnerable to serious illness in  B.C., Henry said.

On Monday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced  preliminary results in clinical Phase 3 trials to suggest the vaccine  could be 90 per cent effective at preventing COVID-19.

Ottawa has already pre-ordered 20 million  doses, enough to vaccinate 10 million people with the required two doses  each. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he expects the doses to arrive  in the early months of 2021, after which distribution could begin.

“Ninety per cent [efficacy] is really  good,” said Henry. “We know if we get at least 50 or 60 per cent  prevention, that is going to make a major difference.”

Henry has said many times that a vaccine is  not a silver bullet, but that it will be another tool to prevent spread  of the virus to the most vulnerable in B.C. “We can give it to people  who are more likely to have serious illness,” she said.

Surgeries

During the last surge, B.C. had halted all elective and non-urgent surgeries in the province to free-up hospital capacity.

But since the surgical renewal strategy was  introduced in May, these procedures have slowly resumed. From Oct. 26  to Nov. 1, B.C. performed 6,894 surgeries, which Dix said was more than  the same week last year.

Now, reducing transmission in communities  is an essential part of protecting hospital capacity so these surgeries  can continue with ample room for COVID-19 patients and other urgent  situations.

The best tools right now

And Henry says stopping physical  gatherings, wearing masks and physically distancing in everyday life are  the best tools available at the moment to do that.

“The purpose of these orders is to break  these chains of transmission,” said Henry. “Early in 2021 we should have  a vaccine to add to our tools.”

One thought on “More British Columbians are being hospitalized due to COVID”

  1. They do not say what population is dead. Old people.old seniors in homes and opioid deaths
    are biggest numbers .they lie about numbers.wt in order to frighten the public and give a vaccine that has not been thoroughly tested . It is shameful what you government spooks are doing to children and to humans..yltaking away our freedom to live. Our right to exercise and ou
    right to have social contacts. I hate all of this bull shit. I survived sarscov2 in india .
    I have immunity. I saw Asia make bigger effort to educate on Corona virus than north america. You people are thugs.

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