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B.C. has released its first set of weekly COVID-19 data.

B.C. shifts to weekly COVID-19 data reporting

By Richmond Sentinel

Published 4:47 PDT, Thu April 7, 2022

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B.C. is transitioning from daily to weekly COVID-19 reporting, beginning today.

The B.C. Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) will update its dashboard and release a report online each Thursday afternoon. The new reports will focus on severity and trends over time, similar to how other communicable diseases are reported. They will provide information from the past full week, from the previous Sunday to Saturday.

The new COVID-19 reporting approach aligns with a shift away from a "case-management" model to a "surveillance" approach that focuses on identifying meaningful changes in COVID-19 trends over time across different regions of the province. It is similar to how government monitors for other serious respiratory illnesses through FluWatch.

The first reports and updates were published today and include data up to the week of March 27 to April 2.

In the past week (March 27 to April 2) there were 1,706 new cases reported, bringing the overall total to 357,242 since the pandemic began.

Of the new cases, 333 were in the Vancouver Coastal Health region (including Richmond), 391 in the Fraser Health region, 377 in the Island Health region, 459 in the Interior Health region, and 145 in the Northern Health region.

As of today, there are 324 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19, 38 of whom are in critical care, according to the BCCDC dashboard.

There were 193 new hospital admissions in the past week (March 27 to April 2) according to the BCCDC report. Of those, 36 were in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 73 in the Fraser Health region, 34 in the Island Health region, 39 in the Interior Health region, and 11 in the Northern Health region.

The 30-day all-cause mortality report indicates there were 11 deaths between March 27 and April 2. Of those who died, two lived in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, one in the Fraser Health region, three in the Island Health region, one in the Interior Health region, and four in the Northern Health region. According to the BCCDC report, these numbers are expected to increase as data become more complete.

Locally, the latest data from the BCCDC indicates that there were 46 cases in Richmond last week (March 27 to April 2), up from 28 the previous week (March 20 to 26).

Changes in the new reporting system are described below:

Cases will be based on an individual's first PCR test through the Medical Services Plan (MSP). In the current system, case counts include both laboratory data and health authority line lists. The latter health authority-based line list workflow will be discontinued with the updated approach. Comparisons between the two systems indicate that the number of reported cases show similar trends over time.

Hospitalization reporting will leverage the hospital occupancy data that is currently used to report on "currently in hospital" for all hospital metrics. With the move to use of broader administrative data there will likely be a one-time increase in the number of cases ever hospitalized. The weekly situation report will move to reporting on critical care, in line with the COVID-19 dashboards. There will also be an increase in the number of cases ever in critical care.

Death reporting is changing to rely on data from Vital Statistics, the agency that registers all deaths in B.C. and reports on death statistics reported by BC Coroners Service. In the current system, each death in someone with a documented COVID-19 infection was reviewed to determine if the death truly resulted from the COVID-19 infection. These were documented on health authority line lists through manual workflows.

In the new system, all deaths that occurred within 30 days of an individual's positive lab result will be reported, regardless of whether the underlying cause of death was determined to be COVID-19 or not. This broader definition means that some deaths will be reported that are not related to COVID-19. Knowing when a death occurred can take, on average, four to six days to enter the system.

The new approach relies on more preliminary information from an automated data linkage and discontinues the manual, resource-intensive approach. Mortality data will be reviewed retrospectively once the cause of death is reported by Vital Statistics in order to better understand the true scope of COVID-19 mortality. Cause of death information takes, on average, four to eight weeks to enter the system.

Reporting of deaths in this system is different from the previous system and is not comparable. A new separate death data stream will be started while access to the previous records will remain.

The transition to a new system will not result in a retrospective altering of past data. A B.C. government news release notes that any comparisons between the two different time periods should be made with caution.

For more information and data, click here.