The provincial government has allocated 15 ICU beds in Vancouver and Victoria to take patients from overcrowded hospitals in the Northern Health region.
Health Minister Adrian Dix and provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry made the announcement during a press conference on Tuesday. Ten beds in Vancouver and five in Victoria will be allocated for Northern Health patients, Dix said.
As of Tuesday, 12 ICU patients from northern B.C. – including nine who are COVID-positive – had been transferred south.
“The north has been overstretched by COVID-19,” Dix said. “There is a huge pressure on the University Hospital of Northern B.C. in Prince George. When you have six times the number of COVID cases per capita as Vancouver Coastal (Health), that is a problem.”
Dix said moving patients from Prince George to Vancouver or Victoria is “not ideal,” but the move was necessary to take the load off health care workers in the north and ensure quality care. Having to move severely ill people is never an ideal situation, and it can make it difficult for friends and family to be there to support their loved ones, he said.
The Ministry of Health is making a commitment to ensure those people will be transported back home when they are well enough or hospital beds become available again, he added.
Last week, the province had to cancel 511 non-urgent surgeries – including 167 procedures in the Northern Health region – because of the strain the pandemic has put on hospitals, he said.
“This is obviously not where we want to be,” Dix said. “Surely those 511 people who had medically-necessary surgeries postponed would rather have had those surgeries.”
On Tuesday, the B.C. Centre for Disease Control reported 79 new cases of COVID-19 in the Northern Health region. The number of active cases rose to 921.
As of Tuesday, 64 Northern Health residents were hospitalized with COVID-19, of which 22 were in intensive care. No new COVID-related deaths were reported in the region, leaving Northern Health’s death toll from the pandemic at 169.
As of Tuesday, 87 per cent of eligible British Columbians (people aged 12 and older) had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, and 79.5 per cent were fully vaccinated. Despite making up roughly 13 per cent of the population, unvaccinated people accounted for 76.1 per cent of new COVID-19 cases and 84.7 per cent of COVID-related hospitalizations over the past two weeks.
The Northern Health region has the lowest vaccination rate in the province, with only 75 per cent of eligible people having received at least one dose, and 65 per cent fully vaccinated, Dix said.
“The consequences of these vaccination rates are clear, we see them in our hospitals,” he said. “Vaccination is the solution.”
