School’s Going Well, Surgeries Return, and More Positives for BC’s Pandemic Response

Parents concerned about sending kids back to school in British Columbia have little to worry about, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said today.

New modelling from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control indicates that as long as children and adults continue to practice physical distancing, the impact of reopening schools, which voluntarily started on June 1, will be minimal.

“Reopening of schools is not something we would expect to cause rapid growth, as long as we are continuing to keep our safe distance,” said Henry, noting children are much less susceptible to infection than adults.

Elective and non-urgent surgeries are also nearly back to pre-pandemic levels after being suspended on March 16. 

In the past week, there have been 5,174 surgeries compared to the approximately 6,000 per week before the pandemic at all 59 public surgery centres and seven of eight private contracted facilities. 

During the suspension, the province averaged only about 2,400 surgeries per week.

“We’re getting closer to that number,” said Health Minister Adrian Dix. “And I want to congratulate everyone involved.”

More specific geographic data also highlights that Vancouver, North Vancouver and the Fraser Valley have had the highest concentration of cases in the province, with over 100 infections per 100,000 residents.

Meanwhile, Richmond has the lowest infection rate in the Lower Mainland with zero cases in the second half of May. The northern and interior regions also had low case rates.

Now in the second virus incubation period since beginning to reopen on May 19, the province is seeing promising signs that the public is following public health guidelines, and it is safe for some services to return closer to normal.

Contacts between people have remained in the advisable range of 30 to 40 per cent of normal, with steady increases in people visiting parks now that restrictions have relaxed.

“That’s what we want to stay at,” said Henry. “And we know if we do that, we’re likely to have low numbers of cases over time and likely to have low growth in numbers of cases.”

Self-isolation when ill remains a necessary step for everyone, said Henry, noting that it must accompany loosened restrictions.

Most cases are in people ages 30 to 60, but seniors continue to be the most at risk of serious illness and death, a trend the most recent modelling reflects from months past. 

People over 70 account for over 70 per cent of deaths, with people in their 70s making up nearly half of people hospitalized throughout the pandemic in B.C. due to the pandemic’s grip on long-term care facilities.

And despite a slightly greater number of women testing positive for COVID-19, men continue to be hospitalized and pass away at higher rates, accounting for about 61 per cent of total deaths.

“We still do not have all the answers to that yet,” said Henry.

Dix says single-site staffing to prevent transmission between assisted living and long-term care facilities is nearly complete with 8,495 of 8,878 staff formerly working at multiple facilities now solely staffed at one.

Staffing at 199 of 204 long-term care sites across the province is complete, and about 33 sites remain to be finished.

Where in the world?

Contact tracing data from the BCCDC shows that of the 1,150 close contacts of people infected before March 15, only about two per cent developed COVID-19 themselves.

The number of close contacts dropped from 10.7 to 3.6 people after physical distancing measures were implemented, making it easier to track down the 12,342 total contacts traced during the later phase of the pandemic.

And nearly three months into physical distancing and other public health measures, the province now knows where a majority of its cases originated in the world.

Preliminary genomic tracing — using the genetic makeup of the virus as it changes over time to establish its origin — indicates that the earliest cases of COVID-19 came from Wuhan in China mid-January, but that they resulted in relatively few transmissions.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to rapidly sequence genomes to track the trajectory of our pandemic over time,” said Henry.

Next were strains from Iran in February, which also did not transmit much. 

But a cluster of cases traced back to a Vancouver dental conference in early March shows that three strains originating from Italy and Germany took off in the province. Around 87 attendees were directly related to one genome.

And multiple transmissions from Washington and across Canada and the U.S. also went on to infect more people, “seeding outbreaks” in long-term care and assisted living.

“Again, it tells us the risk that we have of congregating together when this virus is circulating,” said Henry.

The new data are further tools in the province’s toolbox, Henry said, stressing the importance of maintaining distance to keep risk low.

“This is the data that will guide us as when we can move into the next phase of our restart plan,” she said. “What we do today will make that difference for the coming weeks.”