Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Jill Sperling

COVID-19

Interior Health “cautiously optimistic” vaccine rollout will prevent spike in hospitalizations

Apr 1, 2021 | 4:38 PM

KAMLOOPS — Interior Health says it is hopeful that an efficient vaccination rollout can prevent a major spike in hospitalizations.

Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Albert de Villiers says the vaccination rollout is ahead of schedule. As of Thursday (Apr. 1), people who are 72 and older, or Indigenous people 18 and older can book their vaccine.

People who are clinically extremely vulnerable are also eligible.

“We are getting to the people who are prone to be hospitalized,” de Villiers said. “And, I think that’s excellent and I think if we can keep this up we will be able to keep our hospitalizations stable. I’m cautiously optimistic that we won’t see a spike. I know in the Lower Mainland they have seen a spike after they increase in the community as well, but we do have very good immunization rates.”

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To date, 70 variants of concern have been identified within Interior Health. Within this number, there have been small clusters of the variant first identified in Brazil.

However, Interior Health says the latest data shows very few active variant cases.

“Of the 70 we’ve got in IH — those are all confirmed ones, those are not presumptive ones — of those, 27 are the P1, that’s the Brazilian variant, and only four of them are currently active. In total, out of the 70, only five of them are still active cases and it does seem like we have contained them in the sense we do the contact tracing… and we have seen it hasn’t spread outside of the small inner circle.”