The decline in COVID-19 infections serious enough to require hospitalization, and treatment in intensive care units (ICUs), continued to fall today, with government data showing 449 such patients are in B.C. hospitals while 63 are in ICUs.
This is the lowest total for hospitalizations since Jan. 10, when there were 431 COVID-19 patients in B.C. hospitals and the government had a far more restrictive way of counting these hospital patients.
B.C. ICUs have not had fewer than 63 COVID-19 patients since Aug. 20, when there were 59 such patients, according to government data.
The ICU patients back then were also counted using a more restrictive counting mechanism that excluded people who caught COVID-19 in hospital while there for another ailment. The previous restrictive counting system also stopped counting people after they had gone 10 days after first exhibiting symptoms, and were therefore deemed not infectious, as well as COVID-19 patients who normally live outside B.C.
Sadly, COVID-19 claimed another 11 lives in B.C. in the past three days, raising the province's pandemic death toll to 2,914.
No new health-care outbreaks have been reported, while several have been declared over, leaving 17 active outbreaks in hospitals and seniors' living facilities.
Government data shows that 19.1 per cent of those infected in B.C. between Feb. 25 and March 3 had not received at least two doses of vaccine, and that 33.9% of those hospitalized in B.C. between Feb. 18 and March 3 were not fully vaccinated.
People who do not yet have two doses of vaccine represent slightly more than 13.9% of B.C.'s total population.
The more detailed data for vaccinations is that 4,520,196 eligible B.C. residents have had at least one dose of vaccine, while 4,311,761 are considered fully vaccinated with two doses, and 2,605,260 have had three doses.
Recent Statistics Canada data said that in the 2021 census, B.C.'s population had increased 7.6 per cent between 2016 and 2021, and that the new total number of residents was 5,000,879.
Glacier Media's calculation therefore is that nearly 90.4 per cent of B.C.'s total population has had at least one dose of vaccine, and almost 86.2 per cent of the province's total population has had two doses. More than 52 per cent have had their booster doses.
New doses for each of those dose categories has been on the wane. In the past three days, an average of 465.33 people per day received their first dose of vaccine, while 2,084.67 received second doses, and 3,462.33 received third doses.
There were 997 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the province in the past three days. Data for the number of tests conducted was not available. •
