COVID-19: BC Hospital cases drop again, report claims latest wave has peaked

BC COVID-19 cases. Hospitals fell to their lowest level since June on Thursday as independent experts say the latest Omicron-led wave has peaked.

As of August 18, there were 366 hospitalized patients, down 32 from last week. Twenty-two cases are in urgent care, unchanged since last Thursday.

BC will report all positive cases in that hospital, regardless of why the person was admitted.

Updates are from the independent B.C. COVID-19 Modeling Group In a Wednesday reportOmicron BA. 5 states that the variant wave has reached its peak.

According to this report, the subspecies has several more contagious sublineages, but none appear to be strong enough to trigger another wave in the near future.

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OR , the report, citing serological (blood test) data, suggests that current COVID-19 infection rates may be underreported by a factor of 100.

Molecular testing for COVID-19 has been severely restricted in the state since late December 2021, with just 15,332 tests performed in the week ending August 13, confirming 877 new cases. .

Despite apparent improvement, the number of people hospitalized with COVID actually increased by 13 August.

However, these figures are preliminary and weekly admission data have been consistently revised upwards significantly.

For context, the BCCDC originally reported 173 of her COVID-19 hospitalizations between 31 July and 6 August. That number has now been revised to 226, an increase of 30.6%.

How many people are actually dying from COVID?

Thursday's BCCDC report added 24 more deaths have also been documented, and this figure is even less reliable than for hospitalized patients.

Like hospitalizations, deaths are usually revised upwards in the following weeks. However, the B.C. state, which counts all deaths among people infected with her COVID over the past 30 days, says the metric grossly overestimates the number of deaths.

Read more: COVID-19: BC hospital cases fell to a one-month low

A subsequent analysis by the BCCDC found that among the deaths between April 9 and June 16, the underlying cause of death was Only 43% are estimated to have had COVID-19 as

B.C. 19 A modeling group suggests that COVID-related deaths may actually be higher than reported, based on BC's excess mortality rate. Additional deaths since the start of the pandemic over what would be expected based on the pre-pandemic years.

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The report found that only half of the excess mortality was accounted for by the official BC. Statistics like COVID-19 deaths, heat domes, and toxic drug crises.

Reports say COVID-19 has spread far beyond the 30 days the BC CDC uses in its mortality metrics. , which it claimed could pose an increased health risk, suggests that states "likely underestimate deaths from COVID significantly."

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