Dr. Albert De Villiers says Interior Health has been anticipating a spike this fall (Image Credit: Global Okanagan)

By Chad Klassen

COVID-19

As Lower Mainland COVID-19 cases spike, Interior increase no surprise: chief medical health officer

Nov 18, 2020 | 4:16 PM

KAMLOOPS — As B.C. grapples with ever-increasing COVID-19 numbers, mainly in the Lower Mainland, Interior Health’s chief medical health officer expected the recent rise in the region.

Albert De Villiers says some of the cases are linked to people travelling to and from the Lower Mainland.

“We have had cases like that — and some of our clusters started like that as well. We’ve had people travelling from the Lower Mainland and other provinces, as well, where there are more cases,” said De Villiers.

Interior Health has experienced more than 1,100 cases since March, only behind Vancouver Coastal (6,871) and Fraser Health (14,659) that have become hot spots for the virus. De Villiers says it’s been mainly young people in the Interior contracting COVID.

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“We’ve got fewer people, so it’s less of an issue. But yes, we have seen with parties or people renting houses together, especially over Halloween,” he noted. “We’re getting some of the fallout now after the Halloween time when people visited together.”

De Villiers added, “It’s not an easy message [to young people] because… they think they are indestructible and then will get it for a few days and they’ll be fine. My big thing is you never know who you’re going to be in contact with. You might be in contact with a person who knows a person who knows somebody in long-term care and they go and visit them and you spread it that way.”

De Villiers adds the region has been lucky the elderly population hasn’t been struck hard. There are only three outbreaks in long-term care facilities, including the one case of a care-aide at the Hamlets in Westsyde.

The uptick in cases prompted Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry to implement travel restrictions in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. No such restrictions have been put in place here as of Wednesday (Nov. 18), but De Villiers is telling people in the Interior not to travel to contain spread. He says formal restrictions will be implemented only if there’s more community spread.

“There’s no specific benchmark and number of cases. It’s more if we start seeing the widespread community spread, which we haven’t seen. We’re seeing it mostly in clusters, in family groups or in social gathering.”

De Villiers says the upside is the health authority knows exactly where the cases are coming from. One hundred thousand tests have been conducted within Interior Health. The positivity rate has jumped from 0.3 per cent on Oct. 12 to 3.6 per cent on Nov. 12.

“If you think about it, let’s say at three per cent positivity rate, that still means for every 100 people we test, there’s only three that are positive, so it’s still a very low rate,” he said.

As far as vaccine distribution, Interior Health is coordinating with B.C. health officers to determine the most effective method to get it to Interior residents when available. With one of the vaccines needing to be stored at about -75°C, it creates challenges.

“We are working with the manufacturer as well, as soon as it gets approved by Health Canada. How will we actually distribute it out there? There are certain things we need to put in place. We need to make sure we have the correct fridges in place and the correct distribution centres in place, so we can actually take it all over the region and to anybody who needs it.”