Here's how B.C. is changing the data it releases about COVID-19
B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry speaks during a news conference on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. (CTV)
British Columbia is changing which data it releases about COVID-19 in its daily reports on the pandemic, the province's top doctor announced Wednesday.
In the coming days, the province will stop reporting numbers for "active cases" and "recoveries" in its daily pandemic updates and on the B.C. Centre for Disease Control dashboard, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said.
Henry described the change as yet another byproduct of the way the province's response to COVID-19 has adapted due to the Omicron variant.
"We'll be modifying our surveillance reports and looking at what are the important things that we need to monitor and what is the time frame that we need to monitor those in?" the provincial health officer said.
One of the changes B.C. has made during the Omicron wave has been a dramatic restriction on who can get tested for COVID-19.
Before Omicron, anyone with symptoms was encouraged to get a test. Since the provincial testing system was overwhelmed in December, however, the province has limited testing to select groups, even as the demand for tests has fallen back below the provincial system's capacity.
Today, testing is only offered for those "who need a test because it affects their health management," and health-care workers who need to know whether they have COVID-19 because it affects when they can return to work, Henry said.
"Because of that, a couple of the metrics that we've been reporting on daily - particularly the ones about active cases and people who have been removed from isolation - are no longer accurate and they're no longer an accurate reflection of what's happening in the community," she said.
Henry did not specify when the province would stop reporting on those two metrics, saying only that they would be removed from the daily updates from the Ministry of Health and from the dashboard. Wednesday's statement from the ministry included both numbers.
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