Almost 4 years after B. C. Although he showed his first case of the new coronavirus believed to be known as COVID-19, the province begins 2024 with another 219 people hospitalized with the disease.
This is a notable jump from the last update provided via British Columbia. Center for Disease Control on Dec. 21, when there were 153 positive patients in hospitals across the province.
In its latest update, the BCCDC says this roughly 43% increase in the hospitalized population “is being monitored. “
BEFORE CHRIST. It starts 2024 with 219 more people hospitalized due to COVID-19.
As the graph shows, B. C. We are entering 2024 with fewer COVID patients hospitalized than at the beginning of 2023, when another 356 people were hospitalized with the disease.
This year’s total is the lowest start to a year on record in British Columbia. In Thursday’s first update from the BCCDC for 2022, there were 324 hospitalized patients. In 2021, the total was 372.
CTV News tracks the number of COVID-19 patients reported in British Columbia hospitals, also known as the “hospital census,” because it’s the only metric the BCCDC reports in real-time. The other knowledge shared through the firm in its Thursday report updates come from the most recent “epidemiological week,” which ends on the Saturday before the update.
The hospital census is also a useful measure of the impact of COVID-19 on B.C. hospitals over time because the way in which it is counted has remained relatively consistent since the beginning of the pandemic, with only one major switch in counting methods, which occurred in January 2022.
At that point, the BCCDC stopped trying to restrict the total to only hospitalized patients due to their COVID-19 diagnosis and began including all patients who tested positive, adding those who were hospitalized primarily for other reasons.
Since those “incidental” hospitalizations were added to the total, fitness officials have estimated that 40-50% of patients reported to the hospital during the week were due to COVID, while the rest were accidental.
Despite this update, weekly and monthly changes in the hospital census remained a good indicator of the severity of the COVID burden on the healthcare system; Direct comparisons between before and after the data update deserve to be made with caution.
Another limitation of the BCCDC’s hospital census data (and, indeed, of all data from the agency’s weekly updates) is that it does not capture the long-term effect of the disease.
In 2023, Statistics Canada found that one in nine Canadians, or about 3. 5 million more people, reported having suffered the long-term effects of a COVID-19 infection.
The BCCDC’s data for new lab-confirmed infections and test positivity matches the recent increase in the hospital census.
There were 431 new infections confirmed through government-funded testing during the epidemiological week of Dec. 24 through 30. That’s an increase from the 383 seen during the preceding week, though still lower than the totals that were being recorded in early November.
Similarly, the consistent percentage of positive tests in the last epidemiological week increased to 9. 1 percent, up from 8 percent last week. This total is also lower than that seen in early November.
Because lab-based testing for COVID-19 in B.C. is extremely limited, the BCCDC also monitors concentrations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater at various treatment plants around the province.
“In the short term, SARS-CoV-2 trends vary across the province,” the firm said in its latest update on Thursday.
“However, if we look at the trends over the past few months, the signal has been strong in most places. “
This is the case for the other respiratory viruses that the BCCDC monitors in wastewater. Rates of influenza A and RSV have increased in recent weeks, according to the latest update.
Influenza has been blamed for the deaths of three children under the age of 10 during the last week of 2023.
Since Aug. 27, 2023, COVID has been the underlying cause of death for 218 people in the province, according to BCCDC data.
The vast majority of those deaths have been among those ages 80 and older, with the median age of deaths caused by COVID in B.C. standing at 84.5 during the time period in question.
One user in their 30s, three other people in their 40s and two other people in their 50s have died from COVID-19 in the last four months.
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