COVID cases in B.C. hospitals fall by 25% from last week

The number of COVID-19 cases in B.C. hospitals fell by 25 per cent from last week, according to data released Thursday.

As of Oct. 27, there were 292 test-positive cases in hospital, a drop of 97 from the Thursday prior. There were 20 cases in critical care, down from 21, according to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC).

B.C.’s hospitalization model counts all cases in hospital, regardless of their reason for admission.

The other data the province releases on a weekly basis has become increasingly unreliable in terms of assessing the true spread of impact of the virus in the province.

Officials reported just 534 new cases for the week ending Oct. 22, a number that likely severely underestimates actual transmission. The number is based on molecular test results, and the province stopped testing all but the most at-risk groups this way last December.

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B.C. conducted just 6,517 tests for the week ending Oct. 22. Test positivity on the 22nd fell to 11.6 per cent, down from 13.3 per cent the week prior.

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For the week ending Oct. 22, the BCCDC reported 148 new hospital admissions province-wide, but those numbers are preliminary. Admissions are typically revised upward by more than 20 per cent the following week. The number of hospitalizations reported last week, for example, have since been upped by 25 per cent.

Getting a true measure of the number of people dying from COVID-19 in B.C. remains difficult.

For the week ending Oct. 22, the BCCDC reported 44 deaths. That number, however, includes anyone who died within 30 days of first testing positive for COVID-19, a measure officials say overestimates COVID-19 fatalities.

Subsequent analysis of those weekly reported figures has consistently found that about four in 10 of them are actually caused by COVID.

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Of the 1,438 “COVID-19 deaths” reported by the BCCDC since April 1, 564 (39 per cent) have been found to actually have COVID as their underlying cause, while 138 were still under investigation and 736 were found not to have been caused by COVID.

The report shows that at least 40 people have died from COVID-19 since Sept. 04, though that number is expected to rise given that the BCCDC says it takes about eight weeks to investigate the cause of death.

Of the 564 COVID deaths confirmed since April, the vast majority (505, or 89 per cent) have been among people aged 70 or older.