COVID-19: Good news as BC’s reproduction rate falls below one

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The reproduction rate that determines how British Columbia is doing in the COVID-19 pandemic has dropped below one for the first time in months, the provincial health official said Thursday.

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This means that for every 100 cases of the disease it is transmitted to less than 100 people, so it can decrease slowly.

“For the first time in several months overall, we’ve dropped below one,” said Dr. Bonnie Henry.

“What we have been seeing is a kind of bounce in one, which means that for every infected person, they infect another person on average. Now we are looking at that under one. It’s good news, but it’s just below one, which means we have a fragile balance right now. We are going down slowly. “

596 new cases of COVID-19 were reported during the last day and eight deaths. There are currently 4,451 active cases of the disease in British Columbia, of which 438 are being treated in hospital, including 130 in intensive care.

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Henry’s COVID-19 model update showed a big difference in infection and health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

For example, 60 percent of people infected with COVID-19 in October belonged to the 10 percent of people 12 and older in British Columbia who had not received at least one dose of the vaccine. Additionally, 72 percent of hospitalized cases in the same month were among the unvaccinated, as were 90 percent of all cases in intensive care.

“When we look at the progress of vaccination, we can see that we have made tremendous progress across the board. So we have about 90 percent coverage of people 12 and older and that’s fantastic, ”Henry said.

“But it also reflects that that small percentage of people who are left still have a tremendous burden on our health care system.”

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He said that half of the 2,200 deaths from COVID-19 so far were not vaccinated, and those who were vaccinated and died tended to be older people.

Henry said the infection rate in those under the age of 11 continued to decline, after a spike when the children returned to school in early September. The data showed that the infection rate is especially high in the Northern Health region, where vaccine vacillation is also high. The percentage of COVID-19 tests positive in Northern Health right now is 18 percent compared to four percent on average across the province.

Henry said that COVID-19 was now a preventable disease and the risk of becoming seriously ill from the virus was dramatically higher for people who were not yet vaccinated.

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He said hospitalization rates in British Columbia were “stubborn” and weren’t dropping even though the rate or transmission fell below one. This is because the COVID-19 Delta mutation that is dominant in the province caused more serious illness than the virus that first arrived in British Columbia in January 2020.

Meanwhile, the Vancouver school board has joined Surrey schools in deciding not to impose a mandatory vaccination order on teachers and staff.

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