While COVID-19 cases counts in B.C.’s Interior remain high, the health region’s chief medical health officer Dr. Albert De Villiers believes there may be some stabilization happening following the implementation of new restrictions.
However, not as much as he would have hoped.
The province announced 83 new COVID-19 cases in the Interior on Tuesday, Dec. 1.
It was a major jump from the kinds of new daily case counts seen a month or two earlier.
For example, 13 new cases were reported on Nov. 1 in the region and two new cases were identified in the Interior on Oct. 1.
The daily count of new cases in the region has generally been trending upwards in recent weeks.
However, that doesn’t mean new province-wide restrictions, announced almost two weeks ago on Nov. 19, aren’t having any impact.
“The fact that numbers are not growing exponentially does show that there is some stabilization, but not as much as we would hope for,” De Villiers said Tuesday evening.
“We should all be working together to do what we can to reduce the spread, by following the orders and recommendations from Dr. Henry.”
He cautioned that it may be too early to be seeing the full effect of the latest restrictions.
When she announced the province-wide restrictions and mask mandate on Nov. 19, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said the point was to ensure communities could continue functioning and to keep the pressure off hospitals, intensive care units, and long-term care homes.
De Villiers said Tuesday the region’s hospitals are coping with the current hospitalizations.
“We are able, at this point, to actually maintain the people in hospital. It is not that we are running out of ICU beds or anything at this stage,” he said.
As of Tuesday’s update, 18 people were in hospital in the region and four were in critical care.
The province-wide restrictions, which have been tweaked slightly since they were first announced, ban people from having guests over to their homes to socialize, with few exceptions, and prohibit most gatherings.