Rate of COVID-19 increases slowing in B.C.

NANAIMO — New modelling data from B.C.’s provincial health officer portrayed a sense of optimism in the fight to flatten the COVID-19 curve.

During a Friday morning briefing from Victoria, Dr. Bonnie Henry laid out numerous sets of data illustrating what has happened and why health officers make the decisions they do when fighting the pandemic.

Dr. Henry said clearly cases in the last couple of weeks are “trending up clearly”, but said the rate of positive cases is starting to level off.

“I’m trying not to over call it, but I do believe we’ve seen a flattening, a falling off of that curve.”

Dr. Henry said the daily confirmed COVID rate has dropped from 24 per cent of the overall infection rate to 12 per cent.

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Dr. Henry said while the province’s infection rate is ahead of the rest of Canada, we’re not on the same trajectory of several other hard hit European countries which saw a dramatically higher increase of cases earlier in March.

The COVID testing strategy originally focused on travelers returning to the province, but Dr. Henry said community-based testing is now a priority as the virus spread.

Dr. Henry said the healthcare system is the top COVID-19 testing priority, specifically hospitals, long term care facilities and healthcare workers.

“We know those are where we can get outbreaks, where we can get transmission that can take out healthcare workers and take out health facilities.”

Dr. Henry said the impact of physical distancing efforts will be seen over the next week to two weeks.

Health minister Adrian Dix said it’s believed a little under five per cent of COVID-19 patients in the province would require a ventilator and 13 to 14 per cent would require hospitalization.

He said the province has 1,270 ventilators with more being added to the system.

B.C. currently has 725 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 52 on Vancouver Island. 66 people are in hospital, 14 people have died and 186 have fully recovered.

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