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April 15, 2022 - 4:30 PM
While parts of Canada struggle under COVID’s sixth wave and provinces like Ontario and Quebec have daily tallies of how that’s hitting their health care system, B.C. has taken another approach.
Instead of doing daily updates on things like case counts and hospitalizations, B.C. is updating its COVID Dashboard only on Thursdays based on data for the week ending the previous Saturday, five days earlier.
The latest data shows there were 523 new cases recorded in the week leading up to April 9 in Interior Health and 1,770 in B.C.
It says there were 80 people in hospital in Interior Health with six in intensive care but it doesn’t say if that’s as of April 14 or April 9.
It reports eight deaths over the week. There were 23 deaths in B.C. as a whole during the week.
The case count and hospitalization numbers undercount the real situation since most COVID tests are rapid tests so they’re not recorded and about half the hospitalization numbers are people who are in hospital for other reasons and test positive while they’re in there.
B.C., however, is not out of line with most of the rest of Canada in not reporting daily.
An Infection Prevention and Control Canada portal shows only three provinces reporting current data.
In Quebec, there have been 252 COVID infections per 100,000 residents in the past seven days. Ontario recorded 164 cases per 100,000 while Newfoundland and Labrador was at 327. Yukon is at 228.
Quebec and Prince Edward Island are the only two provinces that still have mask mandates in indoor public spaces. The Quebec mandate was just extended until the end of April.
Ontario also extended its mask mandate but that only covers high-risk environments like health care settings and transit.
It’s sampling of wastewater shows the sixth wave has peaked but it still expects hospitalizations and intensive care admissions to rise further.
Alberta updates its numbers every Wednesday, giving data as of the previous Monday.
From the data that is available, it shows that, among the country’s largest provinces, Alberta has fared the worst during the pandemic, recording 12,433 cases per 100,000 population.
It’s followed by Quebec at 11,703 cases per 100,000, Saskatchewan at 11,294, Manitoba at 9,870 and Ontario at 8,124.
B.C., by comparison, has done well, with only 6,865 cases recorded per 100,000 population.
Those numbers undercount the actual cases since they only include those recorded through PCR testing, not the rapid tests now widely used or those who were never tested.
B.C.’s provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, has said it’s likely that 50% of B.C. residents have contracted COVID.
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