N.B. COVID-19 roundup: Province to provide forecasting at technical briefing today
CBC
The province will provide COVID-19 forecasting at a technical briefing this afternoon.
It comes as hospitalizations and case counts continue to surge due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
A record-high of 86 people are hospitalized because of the virus, as of Monday, including 13 in intensive care. Ten people are on ventilators.
Hundreds of health-care workers are off sick or isolating, and hospitals are at the red COVID alert level, providing emergency or urgent services only.
Dr. Jennifer Russell, chief medical officer of health, Dr. John Dornan, interim president and CEO of the Horizon Health Network, Dr. France Desrosiers, president and CEO of the Vitalité Health Network, and Mathieu Chalifoux, the province's chief epidemiologist, will participate in the 2:30 p.m. briefing.
No politicians are schedule to take part.
The event will be livestreamed here on CBC New Brunswick's website and in French on the government's YouTube channel.
On Monday night, Premier Blaine Higgs told CBC's Power & Politics New Brunswick may revisit the issue of mandatory COVID-19 vaccines.
"I think it's something that will get further discussion in New Brunswick, and probably across the country," he said.
Last Friday, Russell said the pandemic "now poses a grave threat to our health-care system."
There are 7,668 active cases of COVID-19 across the province, based on PCR (polymerase chain reaction) lab tests, including the 220 new cases reported Monday.
But that's not an accurate picture of the virus' spread because PCR tests are now being limited to groups considered at the highest risk of being hospitalized because of the virus, including people over 50.
If people aged two to 49 have symptoms, they are asked to take a rapid test, which is now being treated as confirmatory. If they test positive, they are asked to register their results online.
An additional 443 positive rapid test results were submitted with a Jan. 9 result date, Public Health said in a news release Monday.