Intensive care beds filled to capacity in Kamloops, Penticton

While B.C. as a whole has lots of spare intensive care beds, parts of the Thompson and Okanagan region are at 100% capacity with even their surge beds full.

Last week, Health Minister Adrian Dix told media that B.C. has 510 base intensive care beds and 218 surge beds for a total of 728 beds.

At that time, Sept. 28, there 453 people in intensive care beds, many of them with COVID-19. That included 425 people in base beds and 28 in surge beds.

But a basically good news story for the province doesn’t tell the full picture of what’s happening in individual hospitals.

The latest data provided to iNFOnews.ca by the Ministry of Health shows that, as of Oct. 1, Royal Inland Hospital’s 21 base intensive care beds were all full. It does not have any surge beds.

The story was similar for Penticton Regional Hospital where its seven base beds and two surge beds were all full.

Vernon Jubilee Hospital’s intensive care unit was at 91% capacity with all 10 base beds occupied. Only its one surge bed was available.

The Interior Health region’s biggest hospital, Kelowna General, has 31 base beds for intensive care and nine surge beds. As of Oct. 1, 32 of those beds were occupied, meaning there were eight empty surge beds.

East Kootenay Regional Hospital in Cranbrook has one of its six beds available, Boundary Regional Hospital in Trail was using five of its seven beds, Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake was using four of its 10 beds and Shuswap Lake General Hospital in Salmon Arm was using two of its three intensive care beds.

In all, there are 87 base beds and 20 surge beds in the Interior Health region. Of the base beds, there were three not being used, so a 97% occupancy rate. There were four of 20 surge beds being used, for an occupancy rate of 20%.

The number of people in hospital and in intensive care beds fluctuates day by day.

In Alberta, their 173 intensive care beds were overwhelmed weeks ago so ad hoc spaces had to be created and thousands of non-urgent surgeries were cancelled. Last week there were 318 people in Alberta intensive care beds, most with COVID.

READ MORE: Alberta's Kenney rejects new health rules as COVID-19 cripples hospitals

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