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On Thursday, the B.C. Centre for Disease Control released its first monthly COVID-19 situation report.
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It’s a change from what had been weekly reporting since last fall, as reported deaths, hospitalizations and critical-care admissions have become less volatile. Those numbers aren’t fluctuating or going through seasonal spikes nearly as much as during earlier waves in the three-year-old global COVID pandemic.
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The way data are collected is slightly tweaked starting Thursday as well. Rather than counting only first-time positive lab tests for the virus, any person who has a positive test more than a month since their last confirmed infection will be counted as having had a new infection.
The B.C. CDC says the change is designed to better reflect what is known about COVID epidemiology and might result in a minor uptick in the number of “infection episodes” counted. But the health agency says it is expected to have a minimal effect on reported numbers and will continue to accurately reflect trends in viral activity across the province.
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Although previous surveillance reports are considered valid, the CDC advises against direct comparisons because of changes in definitions.
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Thursday’s report, though it was the first monthly one, provided new data on severe outcomes for just a single week, as in earlier reports. That’s because there was an interim report in mid-April.
Between April 23 and 29, there were 175 hospitalizations, 16 critical-care admissions and 42 deaths reported. (Data for the past six months indicates that about 43 per cent of deaths involving a recent positive lab test for COVID-19 had the disease as the underlying cause of death.)
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There were 636 infection episodes reported, a number that underestimates the prevalence of the virus in the population because of limits on who gets a lab test for COVID — as opposed to the widely available rapid antigen tests that are self-administered and aren’t counted by public health.
In the past four weeks, the rate of lab testing per capita has been relatively stable, between about 64 and 67 tests per 100,000 population. The percentage of positive tests was up slightly over the past month, from 16.7 per cent in the previous four weeks to 18.8 per cent in the current period.
Routine collection of wastewater samples showed the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 — the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 — is up slightly over the past four weeks in Metro Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, while a decreasing viral load was detected from wastewater plants in Interior Health.
The next data report is expected on June 1.
jruttle@postmedia.com
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