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It’s only been a few weeks since Omicron became such a part of the language in B.C. that it seems unnecessary to explain that it’s a variant of the deadly COVID-19 virus. It’s also now common knowledge that Omicron spreads way more easily than the Delta variant that it’s rapidly replacing.

But what isn’t clear, based on how health authorities keep their records, is just how many people are sick enough with Omicron to require hospitalization.

The rate of hospitalization, which is updated every weekday, is a combination of two things, provincial health office Dr. Bonnie Henry said at a news briefing today, Jan. 7.

For one, everyone who tests positive for COVID and is in a hospital is counted as being in hospital with COVID.

“That will be a mixture of people who came in for something else and were screened, for surgery for example... and might have had a positive test,” Dr. Henry said.

“We have a couple of outbreaks right now in acute care and people who were involved in the outbreaks when they were in hospital for something else, they tested positive as part of the outbreak and the people who are actually in hospital because COVID had made them sick enough to require hospital care. That is a time-consuming task."

The other way of viewing the severity of COVID is to match all those who test positive against hospital admissions for COVID. 

Health authorities are using a bit of a composite of those two types of measurements but are trying to find ways to blend them in a more accurate, timely and automated way.

“It is an overestimation of the burden that Omicron is causing but it is the number that we get,” Dr. Henry said. “It’s not 100% accurate every single day because it relies on people counting who is in every single hospital and then collating that information.”

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What the daily numbers do show is that hospitalizations peaked last spring with 515 people listed in hospital with COVID on April 28. The next day, the number of people in intensive care peaked at 178 or 34.6%. At that time there were about 8,000 active cases.

Yesterday, with almost 32,000 active cases, there were 324 people in hospital, 90 (27.8%) of whom were in intensive care.

One of the major difference between the two waves is that the vaccination program was in its infancy and many people had not even received a single dose in April.

Today, more than 89% of B.C. residents are fully vaccinated. Vaccinations seem to reduce the severity of COVID infections.

“We’re in the process, right now, of trying to tease through what is the best measure for us to understand the impact of Omicron on severity of illness and on hospitalizations,” Dr. Henry said.

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