Interior Health Medical Health Officer Dr. Silvina Mema.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Interior Health Authority
February 05, 2022 - 8:00 AM
While COVID case counts are dropping in B.C. overall, they’re staying high in the Interior Health region.
The region has about 14% of the province’s population but had 33% of its new cases on Wednesday, dropping to 28% yesterday, Feb. 3.
“We are continuing to see a very high number of cases in the Interior,” Interior Health medical health officer Dr. Silvina Mema told iNFOnews.ca. “We are seeing cases coming down in other regions but we are a little bit behind in terms of this wave of Omicron.”
The Omicron variant hit the Lower Mainland first and took awhile to reach the Interior Health region with any force. The region is still in the midst of that wave.
“We are suddenly seeing more activity now than we were seeing a couple of weeks ago,” Dr. Mema said. “We know this is going to come down, sooner or later, because that’s what’s happening in the Lower Mainland. They are seeing the activity is declining.”
She can’t say whether Interior Health region has yet hit the peak of its Omicron wave because that picture is somewhat clouded by the way case counts are now tabulated.
People are being advised to stay home if they’re not too sick and either not get tested or get a rapid test. The daily COVID numbers only record those with PCR test and provincial officials estimate the true numbers may be three or four times higher.
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“The good news is, we’re not seeing a lot of severe outcomes as we were seeing before,” Dr. Mema said. “If it had been Delta, or if it had been the time before the vaccine, we would have significant mortality from this. The vaccine has prevented a lot of that.”
The rate of hospitalization in B.C. and the Interior Health region are much more closely matched, with 18% of hospitalizations being in Interior Health versus its 14% of the population.
But, that rate is also overstating the number of COVID cases because it counts everyone with a positive COVID case. More than 40% are people who are in hospital for other reasons and just happen to test positive for COVID while they’re there.
The more accurate measure may be the number of people in intensive care units because those people are more likely to be there because of COVID, although that’s still not 100% of the cases, Dr. Mema said.
Interior Health had 22% of the intensive care cases in B.C. as of yesterday.
Certainly, vaccinations help reduce serious outcomes but Interior Health still lags behind the province's 87% vaccination rate for all residents by 5%. That’s an improvement over the 20% lag earlier on in the vaccination program, Dr. Mema said.
Vaccination rates vary by age group and vaccination status.
As of Feb. 1, 41% of Interior Health residents had a third vaccine dose versus 42% for B.C. as a whole but, until very recently, the Interior Health region had a higher third dose vaccination rate, Dr. Mema said.
On the flip side, only 42% of children aged 5-11 are vaccinated in Interior Health versus a provincial rate of 52%.
On the plus side, school infections are less than expected. Instead of posting schools with possible exposures or outbreaks, the impact of COVID is now being monitored in terms of absenteeism.
Interior Health is notified of absenteeism rates of 25% or more in order to trigger an investigation and, if necessary, letters being sent home to inform families.
That has happened in the South Cariboo but not in the Central Okanagan, the region’s largest school district, Dr. Mema said.
“It seems we may be turning a corner with Omicron,” she said. “We’ll just wait because you never know what will be next but, it does look like we may be seeing the end of it. So, just a little more, I guess, that we have to wait and then we should be fine, for the summer, hopefully.”
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