Thread by @akurjata

OK a lot of COVID-19 stuff has been happening today in Northern B.C. so here's my best attempt at gathering it into a single thread. #cityofPG #bcpoli

First the big news: a rapid-response team is in Fort St. James, two hours away from Prince George, as there is a major cluster of cases there. cbc.ca/news/canada/br…

This morning, BC Emergency Health Services said they'd been told 60 active cases in the community. I was told that number was accurate by a health care person in the community. But as of this afternoon, Northern Health says the active case count is approx. 40 active in Omineca

A number of shops are closing there in light of the numbers and First Nations-led schools and services are shutting down. I got this text from the mayor of Fort St. James - he doesn't have much info, or didn't this morning

At the afternoon briefing, we were told 39 active cases, and 20 are hospitalized. Anyways, point is: things are not great in Fort St. James. And this impacts Prince George because.....

Prince George's University Hospital of Northern B.C. is the COVID-19 primary care hospital for the region. As of YESTERDAY, all but one critical care bed was occupied.

Here are the numbers:

I went into far more detail about the critical care capacity in Northern B.C. in my reporting last week. Listen to the audio piece at the bottom if you want more granular details and remember - things have declined since. cbc.ca/news/canada/br… #cityofPG

Highlights, though, are: Staff is burnt out. Surge capacity is only for short-term emergencies and when you are at or near surge capacity for extended periods, the likelihood of burnout/mistakes/over-capacity increases. Some people are being sent to other regions

Big story number three: Contact tracing. Yesterday, I put out a story indicating contact tracers in the north are falling behind, in part because of this surge in cases. cbc.ca/news/canada/br…

Today, Northern Health confirms that contact tracers are backlogged and they are now changing how they prioritize who gets alerted about exposures to COVID-19.

Finally, the good news: Health official will finally start releasing localized data on a weekly basis as opposed to monthly, as they have been so far. We'll see if that makes a difference.