By Russ Byth

Social distancing making positive impact on B.C. COVID numbers

Mar 27, 2020 | 11:00 AM

B.C.’s Health Ministry gave a technical briefing today on what could be expected as members of the public work to flatten the curve in the fight against COVID-19.

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said the rate of growth is being impacted in a positive way thanks to the distancing measures in place. She can’t say we are bending the curve yet, but social distancing is helping a great deal.

In the chart below, the red line shows the reported cases per million while the gray line shows where we would be without social distancing measures.

As for critical care beds with ventilator capacity, in Interior Health, there are a total of 77 at hospitals and there is the ability to expand to approximately 151. The province has an additional 101 ventilators that can be deployed if needed.

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Interior Health has just over 1,000 medical and surgical inpatient bed capacity.

Projecting from other data, it’s estimated 4.7 per cent of admissions in the province will require ICU, with 80 per cent of those needing ventilation. Thirteen-point-eight per cent will require non-critical care. Interior Health and Island Health can expect patients to stay longer due to the older population.

As for how long they expect patients to stay, the province projects 12 days for critical care and 10 days for non-critical.

The ministry also presented a number of scenarios based on data from South Korea, Hubei, and Northern Italy. If B.C.’s trajectory was to follow that of South Korea, which it appears to be doing, in most cases there would be a sufficient number of ventilators.

As for non-critical care estimates, again using South Korea as a model, Interior Health and all the districts in the province have enough bed capacity for surgical medical patients. All health authorities are making plans if needed, to move non-critical patients out of hospital.

Again, these projections are based on data from what was seen in South Korea. If things were to spiral out of control like they did in Northern Italy, the system would have to create extra capacity outside hospitals for treatment.

Health authorities around the province are also focused on providing support for clinical care professionals throughout the pandemic.

by Russ Byth

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