Sunday April 5, 2020 ~ BC
by Mary Brooke, B.Sc. ~ West Shore Voice News
It’s still early days in the broader scope of the COVID-19 pandemic that is now upon us, but early statistics show what was widely believed to be the general profile of health challenges by age.
A graph released by the BC Centre for Disease Control on April 3 shows the number of hospitalizations (including cases that progress to treatment in the intensive care unit or ICU) and number of deaths, by age.
The data includes information on 1,117 cases, 255 hospitalizations, 116 ICU admissions.
This preliminary data about COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19 in BC (January 1 to April 3, 2020) show that all deaths have occurred in persons over age 60, with the largest number in people over age 80.
This seems consistent with the belief to date that elderly people and those with respiratory and underlying health conditions are more susceptible to the harsher impacts of COVID-19 infection (with the implicit assumption that people over age 60 have more of these types of conditions).
No hospitalizations are seen in the 10 to 19 age group (and almost none in the under-10 age group), but from there the number of hospitalizations rises up and along into the 70 to 79 age group, then falling somewhat in the 80 to 89 and 90+ age groups (most of the seniors are in long term care homes already, and not necessarily being shifted to hospital).
The highest tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases by age category is seen in the age 50 to 59 age group, which might reflect the general age of people on cruises and who have traveled, and returned to Canada with COVID-19.
Most of the early cases of COVID-19 in BC were related to returning travelers (and should be noted that the BC Health care system worked hard and fast to contain those travellers and their potential for contributing to community spread here at home).
The highest number of cases handled in ICU are seen in the 60-69 and 70-79 age groups. Usually there is the use of a mechanical ventilator as part of ICU level care.
Many of the confirmed infections in the age 20 to 40 age group are among people who work at long term care homes in the Lower Mainland. Now 23 long term care homes have outbreaks, as workers tend to take shifts at more than one facility.
Most if not all of those long term care outbreaks can be tracked back to or associated with one long term care worker whose transmission to an elderly person at the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver started the ball rolling with those outbreak clusters, said Provincial Health Officer Dr Bonnie Henry recently in one of her media teleconferences.
As of yesterday, April 4, there were 29 new confirmed cases in BC, bringing the total to 1,203. That includes 554 in Vancouver Coastal Health, 424 in Fraser Health, 76 in Island Health, 128 in Interior Health, and 21 in Northern Health.
======== LINKS:
BC COVID-19 Case Counts (daily): by BC Centre for Disease Control