Many virologists are saying that Covid is going to be with us for a long time—perhaps forever—but that’s a good thing.
A pandemic means that the disease is impacting a wide area, and is experiencing rapid, typically exponential growth.
Right now, the Omicron variant is causing a sharp rise in cases around the world. It is still behaving as a pandemic.
Indeed, as of December 31, nearly 1.7 million people PER DAY were coming down with Covid, and that rate was still climbing. In September, at the previous peak of Covid, only about 800,000 people per day were coming down with the disease.
And while it is apparently not as dangerous as the previous Delta variant, it could still prove difficult for the health care system to manage. If half as many people need to be hospitalized, but twice as many people are catching Covid, the same number of people will need to be hospitalized.
At its peak, the Delta variant spike in Northern Health in October saw 23 new critical care beds added to deal with all the cases, but still, over 100 patients had to be transferred out of the region, as there were more patients than there were available beds.
At the time, the peak seven day rolling average in Northern Health was 750 people. As of December 31, that figure was 2725.
However, with the testing system having reached its limit with 20,000 new tests a day, provincial authorities caution people that number might be a lot higher. “If you have any symptoms, you must assume you have Covid and take measures to avoid passing it on,” says Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry. Instead, PCR testing should be left for people who need to know if they are infected, such as health care workers.
But as more people are either exposed to the virus, get the vaccine, or both, the sharp spikes we’ve been seeing should start to moderate out, hopefully turning into more predictable surges. This will (hopefully) be the start of endemic Covid.
A disease is considered endemic if the reproductive rate is one. That means that one infected person, on average, infects one other person.
In the North, there were 129 new cases reported as of December 31, bringing active cases up to 494. Provincially, there were 3,795 new cases, for a total of 20,811 active cases. Of the active cases, 220 individuals were in hospital and 73 were in intensive care. And, despite the highest number of active cases since the pandemic started, only nine people died between Christmas and New Year’s, the fewest number of deaths since August. And 73 people in intensive care is well below the record of 178, back in April.
Worldwide, since the start of the pandemic two years ago, 288 million people have had coronavirus, while more than 5.4 million people have died.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
