Province considering additional measures to deal with COVID spike in northern B.C.

Photo: BC Gov Flickr

The province is assessing additional measures to manage a sustained spike of COVID-19 cases in northern B.C. that has resulted in the transfer of 55 patients — mostly to Vancouver Island hospitals — since early September.

The number of new cases in the province over the long weekend were stable, said provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, but they are still “very high, and that means that we’ve had, again, increasing impact on our hospitals and our critical care.”

In the North Health Authority, however, COVID-19 is “spreading at a higher than average rate,” Henry said Tuesday.

“People are becoming severely ill — even young people, mostly unvaccinated younger people — and hospitals are pushed to the limit across the north,” she said.

Fourteen critically ill patients were transferred to ICU beds in Island Health, Fraser Health Authority and Vancouver Coastal Health Authority over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Health Minister Adrian Dix said there are just 40 critical care beds in Northern Health Authority with an additional 23 surge beds. “We are all-in to support them,” he said.

Henry said it is difficult to see a preventable illness affecting people across the province. “We need to get vaccination rates up to protect people from having severe illness.”

Dix said 82.6 per cent of people age 12 and older and eligible for the COVID vaccine have been immunized.

Of the 55 people transferred from Northern Health to other ICUs since Sept. 5, 43 have had COVID-19, and only one of those had been fully vaccinated.

Henry noted that as of today a provincial health order requires all workers in long-term care and assisted living be immunized with at least one dose of vaccine and be scheduled for a second dose within 35 days. Those unvaccinated will be on leave without pay. Those with just one dose will receive rapid testing daily.

The province also officially announced that children age five and older must wear masks in indoor public spaces to co-ordinate with the same requirement for students in kindergarten to wear masks in school.

Henry said beyond residents of long-term care and assisted living and the clinically extremely vulnerable, the province is also looking at other compromised groups that may need a booster shot in the near future.

“I want to assure everybody that we have enough vaccines for everyone, whether it’s for someone in long term care for the children, or if it winds up in strict dose will be needed,” Henry said