Fifty-nine more died in British Columbia last week after a positive COVID-19 test, while the number of patients in hospital with the disease appears to have fallen, according to the province’s latest pandemic reports.
As of Thursday, 540 people are in hospital with the new coronavirus, including 49 in intensive care, according to the control panel of BC COVID-19.
That’s a nine percent drop in total hospitalizations since Thursday, when the province reported 596 people in hospital. The number of patients in the intensive care unit also fell by about nine percent from 54 a week ago.
However, all the data provided by the province are preliminary and it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the trends. Under BC’s current reporting system for COVID-19, the figures published for a given week will be adjusted retrospectively and will often change significantly until the next reports are published.
The figures, released on Thursday, are part of a relatively recent change in the approach of BC healthcare professionals, both in the transition to weekly reporting and in the way certain indicators are calculated.
Much of the data from the province are in weekly report from the BC Centers for Disease Controlwhich includes cases, hospital admissions and deaths – although all of these numbers are at least five days old.
Between May 8th and 14th, the province reported 59 deaths. However, this number is reported in a very different way from the past, noting all deaths in anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 30 days, whether or not the disease was confirmed as a contributing factor.
This not only means that it is impossible to say how many of these 59 deaths were actually caused by COVID-19, but it also means that people who died of the disease more than 30 days after a positive test are excluded from these data.
The number of deaths registered between May 8th and 14th is also likely to change significantly by next week.
Last week’s BCCDC weekly report estimated that 59 people died between May 1st and 7th. The latest report says 84 people have died during that time, up 42 percent.
This week’s BCCDC report includes 1,645 new cases of COVID-19, reported between May 8 and 14, based solely on laboratory results, for a total of 369,202 cases to date.
This is a drop of about 17 percent from 1985, registered the previous week, according to the province’s retroactively adjusted data.
However, as PCR testing is already quite limited, it is understood that the weekly number of cases underestimates the true number of people with COVID-19 in British Columbia.
Severe results are more common among the unvaccinated
The percentage of positive tests decreased slightly, reaching 9.7% in the whole province on May 14, compared to 10.6% the previous week. The degree of positivity ranges from 16.4% on Vancouver Island to 7.1% in the Vancouver Coastal Health Area, according to the scoreboard.
Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said just over five percent pass rate is an indicator of a more alarming level of transmission.
A total of 334 people were admitted to hospital with COVID-19 between May 8 and 14, according to preliminary BCCDC data.
IN BCCDC Regional Dashboard shows that in the last month, unvaccinated people were about twice as likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those with three doses, three times more likely to need critical care and about 29 percent more likely to be hospitalized. die.
Meanwhile, tests for wastewater at five different treatment plants, representing 50 percent of BC’s population, show that by May 14, viral loads have increased at three testing sites and decreased at the other two, according to the weekly BCCDC situation report.
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