COVID-19: Dix says BC is on a new wave due to Omicron variants as hospitalizations rise

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As the number of infections and hospitalizations continue to rise, BC Health Minister Adrian Dix said Thursday that BC is in Omicron’s third wave of the COVID pandemic.

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Dix was not available to comment on the latest spike in infections in BC mirroring what is happening in central Canada in other countries, but confirmed in a CBC interview the province is in a third wave.

Later that day, the province released its weekly COVID figures showing a 35% increase from last week in the number of people in British Columbia hospitals with COVID-19, from 273 to 369. About 10 % were in intensive care. It is the first time since the beginning of May that hospitalizations have increased.

In the week ending July 2, 24 people died within 30 days of a positive COVID-19 test.

And there were 765 reported COVID cases, up from 620 the previous week. The number of infections does not reflect the actual number of cases because PCR testing is limited in BC and does not include results from home tests.

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Data from the BC Center for Disease Control shows that people who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the hospital increased in late June.

The Fraser Health Authority, for example, saw a low in COVID hospitalizations in early April, at about 4.5 cases per 100,000 people. In late April, that nearly doubled to about 8.0 cases per 100,000 before the numbers dipped below 4.0 on June 11. On June 30, that figure rose to more than 6.0 per 100,000, according to the BCCDC.

The province’s other four health authorities showed similar peaks and valleys, with Vancouver Island at 5.6 cases per 100,000 on June 30, coastal Vancouver at 5.2, inland at 3.0 and northern Vancouver. BC in 2.3 cases.

The BA.5 Omicron subvariant is overtaking Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 as the dominant strain infecting people in BC, said UBC Professor Sarah Otto, a member of the independent COVID-19 modeling group at BC.

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A computer model projected that Omicron’s BA.5 subvariant would be responsible for 70 percent of COVID cases and increasing, while BA.4 was projected to be 20 percent and decreasing, it said.

BA.5 is spreading faster than BA.4, and “we can go ahead and call this a BA.5 wave,” he said. “We can definitely say that it spreads faster (than previous variants).”

BA.5 is more efficient and better able to enter our cells, so it needs to be exposed to fewer viruses to become infected, Otto said. Furthermore, BA.5 is better at masquerading as a virus, hiding from our natural and vaccine-produced antibodies whose job it is to attack and neutralize them.

Those antibodies naturally disappear over time.

“They (viruses) hide better and we need more of these antibodies to attack them,” he said. “That’s why reinforcements are important, especially with Omicron.”

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Otto said he would like the boosters to be available to everyone every four months because they protect people from infection and also prevent the spread of COVID to more vulnerable people, such as elderly parents.

Waiting for an updated version of the vaccine designed to boost immunity against Omicron variants is pointless because the virus will have mutated by the time those vaccines reach BC, he said.

“Let’s protect people from this wave,” he said.

BC’s stockpile of 700,000 doses due to expire between now and the end of November could be used to immunize the next younger cohort aged 60 to 69 and those over 70 who need them, he said.

Otto also said that “we are going to live with COVID for years and decades and we need to learn what the current risks are.”

The modeling group has proposed that the province provide daily COVID data that people can access in the same way they can use a weather forecast or air quality index to assess their own risk.

And he said that masks, which are no longer mandatory in public places, should be mandatory in traffic and in public places that people cannot avoid, such as supermarkets and pharmacies.

With archive of Cheryl Chan