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One month into the B.C.'s respiratory illness vaccination campaign, COVID rates in the province appear to be decreasing.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Minister of Health Adrian Dix held a press conference Friday to mark one month since they first rolled out this season's vaccination campaign for influenza and COVID-19. The pair's press conferences were a regular occurrence back during the height of the pandemic, but have become far more infrequent.
“We had a fairly early peak of COVID and it has levelled off now and started to come down, Dr. Henry said. “So we're seeing things like the test positivity, people who are sick with COVID and hospital admissions have decreased in these past two weeks, from a peak in early October.”
Dr. Henry said 847,000 doses of the updated COVID vaccine have been administered so far, along with 1,070,000 doses of the influenza vaccine. Last year, B.C. saw a record-breaking uptake in flu shots with 1,775,000 doses administered.
This year, Dix said B.C. has ordered 2.8 million COVID vaccines and 2.3 million flu vaccines.
Dr. Henry noted that people who are most at risk to respiratory viruses continue to be older people, and those who are over 60 years old make up the vast majority of hospitalizations due to COVID and influenza.
While the prevalence of the virus has decreased over the past two weeks, Dr. Henry urged people to get the updated COVID-19 vaccination to best protect themselves and the rest of the population.
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