Almost half a million B.C. booster appointment invitations ignored as COVID-19 hospitalizations rise

The B.C. Ministry of Health says almost half a million invitations to book COVID-19 booster appointments have gone unanswered as the province sees hospitalizations rise.

The information was released Wednesday in an email to CTV News. It shows that as of 3:45 p.m. Tuesday, there were 459,540 invitations which have not resulted in a booking, most of those in the Fraser Health Authority.

According to the latest data, B.C. has administered 998,532 booster doses so far.

The update comes amid a rise in hospitalizations. According to Wednesday's COVID-19 update, there are now 317 infectious COVID-19 patients in B.C. hospitals, an increase of 54 per cent since last week. There are also 83 patients in intensive care.

Dr. David Forest is an ICU doctor at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. He told CTV News that three quarters of the beds in his ward are being used for COVID-19 patients, and all of them are unvaccinated. In addition, there are staffing shortages.

Danette Thomson, interim vice-president of the BC Nurses Union said she is “very worried” about the lack of staff.

“(At) Nanaimo hospital today, 30 per cent of their nurses were missing and yet they had 109 per cent capacity at that hospital,” Thomson said.

B.C. has continued to see daily case numbers in the thousands since the emergence of the Omicron variant, with another 3,798 cases announced Wednesday. It’s widely accepted to cause less severe illness in most people, but experts warn it’s still serious.

“There’s a patient in our ICU who’s been here for almost eight weeks now and that’s not a-typical,” said Forest

Dr. Brian Conway, medical director of the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre said the variant is not the “omi-cold, this is a COVID infection.”

“Even though we’re saying that Omicron is less severe, this is still a version of COVID that will lead to hospitalizations and deaths if we’re not careful,” said Conway.

It's a message echoed by Forest.

“The sheer numbers of people that are being infected dictate that we are going to see a significant burden on the health-care system in coming weeks,” he said.