Image Credit: ADOBE STOCK

As the number of people who have died from COVID-19 in B.C. passes the 3,000 mark today, it’s unclear whether the COVID pandemic in B.C. is easing, stabilizing or getting worse, based on the data released by the Ministry of Health this week.

There were four more deaths in the last 24 hours in the province, bringing the pandemic total to 3,002, according to a Ministry of Health media release issued today, April 1. One of those deaths was in the Interior Health region.

The ministry lists new case counts, hospitalizations and more, but the data also comes with prior cautions that the numbers don’t necessarily give an accurate picture of what’s really happening.

Since people are encouraged to self-test if they are not in high-risk groups and the results of those tests are not recorded, it’s estimated that the real case counts are three to four times higher than the daily numbers listed.

That’s complicated even more today.

During the week, provincial totals of new cases started at 152 on Monday, climbed to 291 on Wednesday then fell to 249 yesterday.

Today, the total leaped all the way to 357. That may appear grim except the data comes with the caveat that “the numbers of new and total cases are provisional due to a delayed data refresh,” today’s news release says.

When it comes to counts in the Interior Health region, they went from 48 Monday (an average of the three days over the weekend), up to 102 on Wednesday, down to 71 yesterday then back to 103 today.

One clear take-away is that Interior Health has a far higher percentage of new cases reported compared to its proportion of the population.

With 14% of the province’s population, Interior Health recorded 21% to 37% of the daily cases.

A more accurate measure, health officials have suggested, is hospitalization rates but, even those may be off by 50%. People who go to hospital for other reasons are tested for COVID. If the results are positive, they’re classed as COVID cases, even if they have no symptoms.

Hospitalizations fluctuated between a high of 288 Monday to a low of 273 on Tuesday. There were 274 reported today.

Those in intensive care are more likely to be legitimately there because of COVID. That number started at 48 on Monday and has fallen steadily to 35 today.

Vaccination rates change very slowly because of the high numbers of people already vaccinated.

Over the course of the week, those with at least one dose climbed to 93.5% from 93.4% but, that means 4,332,566 people have received one dose. Of those, 4,221,814 have received a second dose, increasing the vaccination rate in that group to 91.1% from 91%.

Those receiving three doses represent a smaller pool (2,669,446) so that rate climbed to 57.6% from 57.4%.

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