With the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 across B.C. at a record high, Interior Health says it is closely monitoring the situation locally.
As of yesterday, there were 409 people in hospital with COVID-19 across the province, 23 across Interior Health. There were 125 people in ICU across B.C., eight in Interior Health.
IHA Vice President of Pandemic Response, Karen Bloemink, says for now they’re able to handle the demand.
“Our hospitals do work together as a network of hospitals in this health authority, and our network of critical care units work together in this same way,” she said. “Services are available. We have staff on the ground in those units and we are managing the demand that we do have on our plate.”
“We are monitoring our hospitalizations and our critical care capacity on a daily basis and more frequently as needed. As of today, our capacity is handling the demand.”
Chief Medical Health Officer, Dr. Albert de Villiers, notes there are fewer people with COVID-19 now in Interior hospitals than there were at the peak of the second wave in December and January.
“We were averaging about I think about 50 people hospitalized. We are at about half that currently. So, it is definitely going better,” he said. “I’m saying it cautiously optimistic because we know we sometimes follow a few weeks after Fraser Health, so we might see it going up, but at this stage we are definitely within our capacity.”
During a press conference on Thursday, De Villiers noted that it is mainly younger people who are testing positive for COVID-19 as the older population is getting immunized with at least their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
“The good news that we have seen is because our immunization rate, specifically in long-term care but also people over the age of 65-70 who have been vaccinated, the infection rate is definitely coming down in that specific group,” de Villiers said.
“We do see younger people getting infected now and I know there’s been questions about the variants and yes we have seen more variants amongst younger people but partly it’s because some of the older people have been vaccinated and their vaccine currently protects against the variant as well.”
As of yesterday, there were 910 active cases of COVID-19 in Interior Health, compared to 5,316 cases in Fraser Health and 2,995 cases in Vancouver Coastal Health.
