By Kate Bouey

Healthcare workers slammed by COVID

May 4, 2020 | 2:54 PM

The toll that COVID-19 has had on B.C.’s health care workers was made obvious Monday as officials released the latest epidemiological modelling.

Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer, says 428 health care workers are known to have suffered from the virus.

These include doctors, nurses, dentists and care home workers.

Henry says only a small proportion, eight percent have been hospitalized and three percent have received intensive care.

One health care worker has died.

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“Many of these people were affected at work, either from a colleague or acquiring this from patients who had COVID-19,” said Henry during a news conference in Victoria on Monday.

She said other sources were a Vancouver dental conference and travel.

She said sufferers were mostly younger females who suffered a milder form of the illness.

According to the latest information provided from across the province, there have been 53 new cases of COVID-19 since Saturday leading to a total of 2,224 since the virus took hold in the province.

There are 177 known cases in the Interior Health region.

There are 23 outbreaks in longterm care and assisted living facilities on the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley as well as three outbreaks in poultry process plants.

Three more people have died of the virus for a total of 117 deaths in B.C.

Henry also outlined what will happen once the province’s economy is reopened in stages.

Currently, public contact is down to around 30 percent of normal.

She said models show that if contact is increased to 40 percent “new cases will be relatively low over weeks and months and hospitalizations would be low.”

An increased to 60 percent contact would also be “manageable,” Henry said.

However, the province’s top doctor said if there was an increase in contact to 80 percent then B.C. “might be in a situation where we see a rapidly increasing outbreak.”

by Kate Bouey

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