Increase in B.C.’s COVID-19 cases is still manageable, Dr. Bonnie Henry insists

Another day with high numbers of new COVID-19 cases in B.C. – 89 in the last 24 hours – is still manageable, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said in a briefing today, Sept. 4.

With only 34 people in hospital, the health care system is not being stressed and health minister Adrian Dix pointed out that the province is rapidly catching up on the backlog of elective surgeries that were put on hold earlier in the pandemic.

It also reflects the fact that more testing is being done, the average age of infection is declining and the number of people getting sick enough to need to be hospitalized remains low.

“This tells us we still are seeing this virus circulating in the community but we are finding that balance of keeping that to a minimum,” Dr. Henry said.

She presented an update that showed, for example, that the median age is down from being in the 50s to 41, which reflects that most of the new cases are in the 20 to 39 age group.

While hospitalizations are up slightly, the numbers are down from more than 100 in the spring. That again reflects the fact that more younger people are getting the virus and tend to not get as sick.

Testing is up to 4,000 to 5,000 people per day with about two per cent testing positive.

A lot of the transmission is happening in restaurants, bars and at parties with people in close proximity with each other and mostly indoors. There have also been workplace transmissions but that is generally between workers, not customers.

And, she noted, while masks are important where safe distancing can’t be maintained indoors, walking past someone on the sidewalk is not a risk of transmission.

“This weekend in particular, choose to go small,” Dr. Henry said. “Let’s make sure this Labour Day Weekend we are united in our singular focus to continue to stop these chains of transmission.”

Her charts showed that the infection rate in much of B.C. is very low, below two per 100,000 in the Interior and on Vancouver Island, but they climb to 15 to 16 per 100,000 in the Lower Mainland. That’s still below some standards that say schools should not open if there are more than 25 cases per 100,000 people.

The 89 new cases brings the provincial total to 6,041.

Since January there have been 3,155 cases in the Fraser Health region, 2,012 in the Vancouver Coastal heath region, 450 in the Interior Heath region – an increase of five – 178 in the Vancouver Island Health region, 167 in the Northern Health region and 79 non-residents.

There has been one new death, bringing the total to 210.

— This story was corrected at 7:35 a.m. Sept. 4, 2020 to change the test positive rate to two per cent, not 20.

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