British Columbia Is Starting To Flatten The Curve. Here’s How They’re Doing It
We’re not out of the woods yet.
That was the message conveyed by British Columbia’s chief public health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry during her daily briefing Monday alongside Health Minister Adrian Dix.
But it’s a message that follows the slightest sigh of relief, and acknowledgement that strategies to limit community spread of COVID-19 are working — B.C. may in fact be “flattening the curve.”
“Our percentage of new cases, as you can see, has been slowing, has been bending, and that’s really important and is a testament to the effort that everyone here in British Columbia has been making for these past few weeks,” Henry said Monday.
“But we must keep that firewall strong.”
WATCH: B.C.’s public health officer says the province is holding its own against COVID-19. Story continues below.
While overall case numbers continue to rise, the daily number of new confirmed cases in the province has slowly dwindled, from more than 100 a day the weekend of March 27, to a handful this past week. As of April 8, the province has recorded 1,336 total confirmed cases and 48 deaths.
Even more optimistically, close to two-thirds of all confirmed cases — 838 people — in the province have “fully recovered.”
On March 27, when modelling projected hospital capacity for the province, Henry said there was a “slight chance of optimism” that B.C. was moving towards flattening the curve.
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And while new cases continue to be confirmed almost two weeks later, that optimism that the curve is starting to flatten is a lot more concrete.
So how did the province do it?
How to flatten the curve
First of all, a...
