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December 31, 2021 - 4:30 PM
There’s no escaping from COVID now that the Omicron variant has arrived.
That’s the conclusion provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry drew when asked by a reporter at a news briefing today, Dec. 31, if it’s possible to avoid the virus.
“Everybody is going to be exposed,” Dr. Henry said. “I think that is inevitable right now but, yes, we can do things to try to prevent ourselves from getting sick and passing it on to others if we do get sick.”
Those things include getting vaccinated and getting a booster shot to enhance that protection, as well as the other safety measures that have become common during the pandemic like washing hands, wearing masks and staying home when sick, she said.
“The way it is spreading now, it’s spreading much more rapidly, and that makes it really challenging because people are spreading it to people they’re gathering with or people they’re close to before they recognize that they have symptoms themselves,” Dr. Henry said.
READ MORE: New COVID restrictions for B.C. long-term care homes; easing of self-isolation rules
There are 240,000 B.C. residents who have been invited to get booster shots since that program started Oct. 27 who have not yet booked an appointment.
Some of those may have gotten a third dose outside B.C. and not registered that fact, Dr. Henry speculated. Others may have moved away and still others, including some working in healthcare, just haven’t bothered.
“The booster will help to make sure we’re keeping people out of hospital, and that’s why we focused on people most at risk,” Dr. Henry said. “It does help as well to get more antibodies in our blood so that does help protect against infection but it’s not 100% either.”
Health-care workers have been getting sick with COVID but there is not yet a severe shortage of such workers, as in some other jurisdictions, she said.
Plans have been put in place in B.C. to shift workers around to cover for absences and non-essential scheduled surgeries are being cancelled as of Jan. 4 to free up resources.
READ MORE: B.C. government closes bars, fitness centres because of Omicron
Despite the daily COVID cases counts setting new records just about every day for the last 11 days, hospitalizations have not increased as they have done in, for example, Quebec.
“From the very beginning, we have managed our own pandemic,” Dr. Henry said. “There are some things that are different and there are some things that are very similar to what is happening in other parts of the country. We’ve seen that in the last little while where Delta became a really challenging issue for us to deal with but not so much in other parts of the country.”
READ MORE: Record-setting day for new COVID cases in B.C. and Interior Health
While Quebec is seeing a surge in hospitalizations that’s because they have many people still getting very sick from the Delta variant, Henry said.
That’s not happening the same in B.C.
In November 300 to 400 people were in hospital with COVID most days and about one-third of those were in intensive care.
In the last three weeks, there have been about 200 people a day in hospital with about one-third in intensive care.
That may change in the weeks ahead as case counts passed the 4,000 mark for the first time yesterday.
“If you have 4,000 people and one per cent are hospitalized that’s a lot more cases than when we had 400 people and one per cent hospitalized,” Dr. Henry said. “I don’t know anybody who doesn’t know somebody who’s had it recently. That’s a reflection of the virus changing.”
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