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B.C. sheds light on COVID-19 hospitalization figures

By Hannah Scott, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Published 3:51 PDT, Fri September 24, 2021

Last Updated: 3:54 PDT, Fri September 24, 2021

A Friday morning release from the province says as of Tuesday there were an additional 152 people in hospital due to COVID-19. Those people were not counted in that day’s hospitalization count because they were no longer considered active cases. 

The province refers to this as “discontinued isolation,” which in most cases happens after 10 days “provided there is no fever and symptoms are improving.” For serious cases, the guideline is 20 days, but this varies depending on each patient’s circumstances.

“All COVID-19 patients in B.C. who require any form of hospital care are counted as one case in daily totals when they first enter a facility,” the release says. “These individuals continue to be included in this count for the duration of the time they remain infectious. Once a patient in critical care is no longer infectious with COVID-19, the patient is removed from daily critical-care totals. However, for planning purposes, these patients are still included in the overall COVID-19 counts for the hospital.

“For some of these patients, COVID-19 can trigger difficulties with other health conditions. These patients may require longer periods of hospitalization, but for reasons that are no longer directly tied to COVID-19, or they may have contracted COVID-19 while in hospital and still need care for the underlying issue they were admitted for. This means some patients who entered hospital or critical care as a COVID-19 patient may no longer be counted as COVID-19 patients once they are no longer infectious, even though they remain in hospital.”

The release says discontinued isolation cases are included in reports on overall hospital and critical care capacity to help people understand hospitals’ readiness to provide care. In contrast, the daily reports are intended to help people understand severity of illness and the impact of the pandemic on the population in order to plan public health measures.

The province does report the total number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19—on the B.C. Centre for Disease Control dashboard, under the “currently hospitalized” number is the “total to date,” which rose from 9,634 on Thursday to 9,670 on Friday. The “currently hospitalized” figure dropped by 11 overnight despite the overall rise of 36.

Health officials also reported 743 new cases of COVID-19 today. Since the pandemic began, B.C. has recorded 182,541 cases.

Of the new cases, 111 are in the Vancouver Coastal Health region (including Richmond), 292 in the Fraser Health region, 57 in the Island Health region, 177 in the Interior Health region, 106 in the Northern Health region and no new cases of people who reside outside of Canada.

There are 5,979 active cases of COVID-19 in B.C. and 319 of those people are hospitalized, 149 of whom are in intensive care. 

To date, 7,771,314 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in B.C.; 3,709,554 of those are second doses. 

This means that 88.0 per cent of adults and 87.5 per cent of people aged 12 and older have received their first dose of a vaccine. In addition, 80.9 per cent of adults and 80.0 per cent of those aged 12 and older have received two doses.

Sadly, there were seven new virus-related deaths reported today, bringing that total to 1,922.

Health authorities declared one healthcare facility outbreak over. Active outbreaks continue at 15 long-term care facilities, four assisted or independent living facilities and two acute care facilities.

For the latest medical updates, including case counts, prevention, risks and to find a testing centre near you: http://www.bccdc.ca/ or follow @CDCofBC on Twitter.

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