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With case counts surging in Northern B.C., I wanted to get a picture of what was happening. Here's what I found out (thread)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/northern-british-columbia-hospitals-1.5826061 #cityofPG
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/northern-british-columbia-hospitals-1.5826061 #cityofPG
First, how bad are things? Worse than they've been since this pandemic started. November saw more new infections in the north than the rest of the year combined. We went from 96 new cases from Nov. 1-15 to 343 from Nov. 16 to 30. That's a 350 per cent increase.
Worse is hospitalizatons and critical care.
Daily COVID-19 hospitalizations over the last two weeks have ranged from the mid-20s to mid-30s.
Critical care patients are averaging between 8 and 13 daily.
To put this into perspective:
Daily COVID-19 hospitalizations over the last two weeks have ranged from the mid-20s to mid-30s.
Critical care patients are averaging between 8 and 13 daily.
To put this into perspective:
Northern B.C. has about 6 per cent of the province's population. On any given day we've accounted for as many as 20 per cent of the province's critical care patients.
We are hospitalizing people at 200x the rate of Fraser Health.
Hospitals are filling up.
We are hospitalizing people at 200x the rate of Fraser Health.
Hospitals are filling up.
There are 41 critical care beds across Northern B.C. hospitals, the majority in Prince George - and that's where COVID-19 patients requiring ventilators or ICU treatment are being sent. Doctors here are feeling burnt out. Staff is tired. More important than beds is staff.
To try and deal with this, some patients are being sent to other health zones. Northern Health put out a statement yesterday saying this is part of normal operations, for health zones to help each other out. Which is true. But...
... It's also less than ideal to be shipping COVID-19 patients to other parts of the province. It's not a decision that would be made unless there was a perceived need. And here's where we're at right now:
Yesterday we saw our highest single day case counts ever. Positivity rates are climbing (yesterday's was 19%, the 7-day rolling average is climbing towards the Fraser Valley's high point). High case counts+positivity now often lead to higher hospitalizations two weeks from now
So hospitals here are operating at near surge capacity and it's a not unreasonable prediction to think things will get worse rather than better over the next two weeks. Our daily case counts, hopefully, will decline - but hospitilizations may increase before doing the same
Anyways, I went over my word count for this article and barely got to scratch the surface of this. If you're in Prince George or the north I recommend playing the audio at the bottom for more detailed information https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/northern-british-columbia-hospitals-1.5826061
Oh - I've also had several people point to Canada LNG as the reason for this. That only accounts for a small portion. We've had more than 200 new cases in Northern Health over the past 2 weeks and only around 15 can be attributed to that Kitimat outbreak....
... most of those infected were from other health zones or provinces and so are not included in the Northern Health totals. Also no sense of whether any of them were requiring hospitalization. So a small portion of the overall issue of COVID-19 in the north.
