Indoor gatherings and backyard barbeques are driving transmission of COVID-19 in B.C.’s Interior, the regional health authority’s top doctor said on Thursday.
Dr. Albert de Villiers, Interior Health’s chief medical health officer, called the source of the spread locally “sporadic.”
“It’s kind of all over the place. We’ve had some with people not keeping to the rules, in smaller clusters in household or backyard barbeques. We have not seen outbreaks in restaurants, we haven’t seen big workplace outbreaks either. It’s really sporadic and all over the place,” de Villiers said.
“The message behind that is we all still need to be vigilant, we all still need to stick to the rules, because you don’t know. If you invite your neighbour over, you don’t know who they have been exposed to or whether they have COVID currently.”
De Villiers said younger people are testing positive as the older population is getting immunized with their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
“The good news that we have seen is because our immunization rate, specifically in long-term care but also people over the age of 65-70 who have been vaccinated, the infection rate is definitely coming down in that specific group,” de Villiers said.
“We do see younger people getting infected now and I know there’s been questions about the variants and yes we have seen more variants amongst younger people but partly it’s because some of the older people have been vaccinated and their vaccine currently protects against the variant as well.”
As of Wednesday, there were 944 active cases of COVID-19 in the Interior Health region, compared to 5,088 cases in Fraser Health and 2,968 cases in Vancouver Coastal Health.
Vancouver Island and the northern regions of the province have fewer cases than the Interior, at 537 and 278 active cases respectively.
There have been more than 180,00 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered in Interior Health, the vast majority being a first dose, according to data available on the BC Centre for Disease Control’s website.
Karen Bloemink, Interim vice-president of pandemic response and surgical strategy, said Interior hospitals are not being strained by COVID-19 admissions.
“We are monitoring hospitalizations and our critical care capacity on a daily basis and more frequently as needed. Our hospitals do work together as a network of hospitals in this health authority and our network of critical care units work together in the same way. As of today, our capacity is handling the demand,” she added.
De Villiers added that the Interior is not seeing a spike in hospitalizations as it did during the peak of the second wave.
“To put it into perspective, I know in December/January, at one of our peaks back then, we were averaging about 50 people hospitalized. We are at about half that currently, so it is definitely going better,” he said.
“I am saying it cautiously optimistic because we know we sometimes follow a few weeks after Fraser Health, so we might see it going up, but at this stage, we definitely have enough capacity.”
B.C.’s Interior is fairing better than the Lower Mainland, where hot spots like Surrey, B.C., continue to drive case.
COVID-19 variants are driving virus transmission to the point where the province could hit 3,000 new cases per day, if trends continue.
New provincial modelling shows even if social gatherings drop off over the next few weeks, B.C. would still be on track to hit 2,000 new cases a day.
The province has restrictions in place banning social gatherings, events and indoor dining, but so far the province’s “circuit-breaker” has not driven cases down.
It’s anticipated B.C. will extend its ban on indoor dining until, possibly, after the May Long weekend.
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