The number of patients in the intensive care unit also increased from 38 last Thursday to 47 this week.
The number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital every Thursday since the county began including all positive test patients in its January 2022 hospitalization number is shown in this graph by CTV News.
Hospitalization kits include both those who have a serious illness caused by COVID-19 and those who are admitted to hospital for other reasons and are randomly positive.
Ever since the province launched this “hospital inventory” approach in January, the highest point for patients in the hospital on Thursday was 985, which was recorded in BC.  in early February.  Total weekly hospitalizations reached a low of 255 at the end of last month.
Thursday’s update comes as independent modelers say the delayed and limited statistics released by the province make it “difficult to do anything useful” with the data.

LATE AND REVISED WEEKLY DATA

Ongoing hospitalizations and intensive care admissions are the only up-to-date information the province shares on the weekly update every Thursday.
Other information provided relates to the last full epidemiological week, which ended five days earlier.  And even these numbers are subject to revision in future updates.
This Thursday, for example, the BC Center for Disease Control reports that there were 355 new COVID-19 treatments across the county from April 17 to 23.  That number “is expected to increase as the data become more complete,” says the BCCDC. 
Last week, the BCCDC reported 238 new entries for the week of April 10-16.  In this week’s update, this number was revised to 300.
Deaths are a similar story.  Last week’s report showed 27 COVID-19-related deaths from April 10 to 16, warning that the total is expected to rise.
This week, the total for April 10-16 has been revised to 52 and last week’s total – April 3 to 9 – changed to 40, from 37 last week’s report and 23 when it was first reported on April 14.
It should be noted that the reported death totals are considered overestimation.  They describe the “mortality of all causes within 30 days”, which means that anyone who dies within 30 days of being tested positive for COVID-19 is included in the total, even if COVID-19 was not the one who killed them.
“Mortality is used by all causes because the cause of death takes about eight weeks to record,” the BCCDC explains in its weekly reports.
“The BCCDC will perform retrospective assessments of the underlying cause of death, in addition to the data provided in this report, to better understand true COVID-19 mortality.” 

Although the weekly data is accompanied by many reservations, the trend it shows is clear.  The number of people in hospitals continues to increase and the number of new hospitalizations each week continues to start at a higher point than the previous week and is revised upwards, as is the number of deaths.
The number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases from April 17 to 23 was 2,276, up from 2,036 reported last week.
These kits include only “laboratory-confirmed, laboratory-probable, and associated cases,” according to the BCCDC.  Infections confirmed by rapid antigen testing – the only test method available to the vast majority of British Colombians – are not monitored, which means that the true number of coronavirus cases in the province cannot be known.
However, sewage surveillance in the Lower Continent may provide an indication of trends, and four of the five treatment plants in the area have been showing rising concentrations of the virus for at least five weeks, according to the BCCDC’s weekly status report. 
The fifth wastewater treatment plant in the area has “increased” viral loads, but has not shown a clear trend.
All this adds up to a sixth wave of the pandemic in BC.  which is still growing.  Transmission increases were expected with the end of almost all public health orders in recent months, and BC health officials said returning mask orders or other rules would be a “last resort”.

VACCINATION ELEMENTS

One of the reasons officials have been reluctant to use public health orders to limit the spread of COVID-19 is the antibodies that BC residents have developed through vaccination and previous infection.
Although this resistance to the coronavirus has not prevented people from becoming infected or re-infected, it has reduced the severity of the disease for those who do.
As of Thursday, 91 percent of those ages five and older in BC had received at least one first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, and 88 percent had received two doses.  Sixty percent of adults had received the booster vaccine.
The province administered 33,954 vaccine doses during the week of April 17-23, most of them boosters.
Of the total, 2,145 were first doses and 4,449 second doses.  The rest were third or fourth shots.
The province offers fourth installments – second shotguns – to people considered clinically extremely vulnerable to COVID-19, to long-term care residents and to people aged 70 and over. 
Very few people under the age of 50 have died from COVID-19 in BC Data from the BCCDC show that only 107 of the 3,098 deaths attributed to COVID-19 on April 16 were among people under the age of 50.
More than half of all deaths in the province since that date (1,793) were between the ages of 80 and over, with the median age for all COVID-19-related deaths in BC from 16 April to 82.
Examining the results by vaccination status for people aged 70 and over in the BCCDC COVID-19 Schedule, it is clear that both unvaccinated seniors and those who have received a booster vaccine remain vulnerable to COVID-19.
However, the risk of hospitalization or death is higher for those in the unvaccinated age group.
Because the reinforced group far exceeds the group of unvaccinated, it is also responsible for more deaths and hospitalization, overall.
But looking at the death rate and hospitalization per 100,000, it becomes clear that the unvaccinated are at greater risk.
The unvaccinated inhabitants of BC  aged 70 and over were hospitalized at a rate of 146 per 100,000 between March 27 and April 23, while assisted individuals of the same age group were treated at a rate of 97 per 100,000.
Similarly, unvaccinated individuals 70 years of age and older died at a rate of 32 per 100,000, compared with 17 per 100,000 among those with three doses of the vaccine in the same age group.