Friday December 24, 2021 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke, B.Sc. | Island Social Trends
“If you have any symptoms at all, reassess your plans right now, don’t got to gatherings, take care of yourself,” said Provincial Health Officer Dr Bonnie Henry today.
She’s of course talking about symptoms of COVID-19 infection. At this time, at least 50 percent of test-positive cases show the Omicron variant.
Omicron spreads more rapidly and does cause infection but illness so far seems to be less severe than with the Delta variant, especially if people are vaccinated. Unvaccinated people are experiencing more severe illness.
Risk is going up:
“Your risk is going up, because the virus is spreading, even in people who are vaccinated, though at a lower rate,” Dr Henry said today.
“But still, because there’s more virus circulating people who are not vaccinated are at greater risk right now. So please, walk in to a vaccine clinic, get that vaccine. Get your first shot. That’s going to start getting your immune system working on getting specific protection for this virus. And you will need that. That is an important message to everybody right now,” she said today as a plea.
For her Christmas Eve COVID update today on December 24 from Victoria, Dr Henry was joined by Health Minister Adrian Dix remotely from Vancouver. “I hope you all have a very safe and happy Christmas,” she concluded today.
COVID-season helpers:
The range of health-care professionals who have been brought within the contact tracing circle has been broad for some time, Dr Henry reiterated today.
She listed off the many pools of health-care personnel resources that BC Health has drawn upon to help with the important jobs of contact tracing and administering vaccine doses at clinics.
That list includes students of medicine, nursing and occupational therapy, as well as paramedics, dentists, chiropractors, pharmacy technicians, and retired nurses.
Positivity rate is high:
“Positivity moving to 10 percent in Metro Vancouver urban area,” said Minister Dix today. “The trajectory is significantly upwards,” he said, about Omicron province-wide. In Island Health the positivity rate was 8.1 percent (earlier this week, on Dec 21) and is expected to be just as high, or higher, in today’s data profile from the BC Centre for Disease Control.
Positivity is the number of cases that test positive out of the total tests done that day. Dr Henry has been trying — again today — to ask people who are only symptomatic for COVID-19 to be tested. This keeps the data focused on those who are likely to be infected, but also applies resources where they are needed most.
Testing is at capacity:
Minister Dix said test sites and labs processed 20,133 test samples in the last two days (Dec 22 & 23).
Dr Henry says the lab has a per-day limit of 20,000 tests.
