How many people are in hospital because of COVID-19? No clear answer.

With B.C.’s COVID-19 testing system now collapsed under the pressure of the Omicron variant, rendering daily case counts unreliable, focus has shifted to hospitalization statistics.

So how accurate are those figures?

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry was asked Friday how hospitalizations are counted, and two years into the pandemic, it’s still a work in progress.

“We're trying to tease apart people who are in hospital from COVID, people who are in hospital with COVID, and people who are in hospital because COVID exacerbated one of the underlying conditions,” she said.

“It's not easy to do that, except by going and looking at every individual chart.”

She said the province is working on making tracking hospitalizations more automated and less labour intensive.

Right now, B.C. is counting everyone in the hospital with a COVID positive test as a hospitalization.

That lumps in people who were checked into the hospital directly because of COVID-19 with people who tested positive during screening while receiving treatment for something else or prior to a surgery. People who catch the virus in the hospital as a part of an outbreak are also included in the count.

“So it is an overestimation of the burden that Omicron is causing, but it is a number that we get,” Henry said. “It's not 100% accurate every single day because it relies on people counting who's in every single hospital and then collating that information.”

Further complicating things, are the people who were admitted to hospital specifically because of COVID-19 but are no longer infectious and remain in hospital recovering from the ravages of the virus. They are not included in COVID hospitalization figures.

Henry said the provincial government also closely tracks hospitalizations after a confirmed PCR test to measure the severity of the illness.

She said daily hospitalization statistics released to the public are a “composite” of those two data streams. Health officials across Canada are still trying to figure out the best way to fully understand the impact of Omicron, Henry added.

Health Minister Adrian Dix said Friday the province’s 9,229 base hospital beds are currently at 95.1% capacity. The 2,333 surge beds added for the pandemic are at 25% capacity.

Dix called the figures “not surprising,” noting pre-pandemic, B.C. ran its base bed capacity at 103.5% during the winter flu season. There are also 510 base ICU beds operating at 89% capacity and 218 surge ICU beds operating at 11% capacity.

But a bed without staff to work it, is just a bed, Dix suggested.

“It’s not just an issue of we have this many beds available, it’s also a significant staffing issue, which is why we are taking the steps we are taking,” he said, referring to the postponement of many surgeries.

In addition to freeing up beds for an influx of COVID-19 patients, the delay of surgeries is also needed to mitigate the possibility of large segments of the workforce being forced off the job due to illness.

B.C.'s COVID-19 testing system has been at capacity for over two weeks. PCR tests are being reserved for the vulnerable and healthcare workers, while rapid antigen tests are given to the less ill. Those rapid tests are not counted in daily case counts and vaccinated people with mild symptoms are now being told they don't need a test at all.