From now through to the May Long weekend, travel within British Columbia is going to be on a stay in your zone kind of thing, with Premier John Horgan announcing travel restrictions as part of the BC Government's additional response to the ongoing level of high COVID case reports in the province.
The Premier was one of three participants at today's information session, with Health Minister Adrian Dix and Doctor Bonnie Henry charting the latest results of COVID in the province, as well as the impact that it is having on the provincial health care system.
The newest measures led off the afternoon's discussion, with Mr. Horgan outlining how the province will now be banning all non-essential travel between Health Authority's, enforcement to come by way of fines as Police conduct what the Premier called 'travel audits' rather than checkpoints.
The latter a term that he didn't appear to want see become the narrative to the new temporary government policy. The premier preferring to suggest that the traffic stops will be along the lines of the annual Christmas roadblock campaigns that have become familiar over the years.
The Premier also used his time on Monday to advise British Columbians that this is not the time to load up the Winnebago and visit other areas of the province, but to remain within your own community.
'When it comes to travel, Doctor Henry has been saying for months and months and months stay in your territory, stay in your community, this is not the time to load up the Winnebago and travel around British Columbia ... at this point non-essential travel should be confined to local travel only, I'm confident that most British Columbians want to follow that order and will follow that order as we go forward"-- Premier John Horgan
As part of the program also noted that BC Ferries will no accept passage for anyone other than for essential travel, and Tourism providers hotels have been asked to cancel bookings and reservations and refund money to customers who may have booked a room through this period.
The full details on how the program of enforcement will work and what may be deemed essential travel is to come on Friday by Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth.
The province has also extended the pandemic restrictions on indoor dining at restaurants, with those restrictions to remain in place until the end of the long weekend in May.
For his part of the briefing, Health Minister Adrian Dix focused on the rising levels of hospitalizations that are occurring, the stressed being found by Health Authorities The Minister delivering some sobering statistics on the increased occupancy rates being found across British Columbia.
He also noted that the province is moving into utilization of surge beds at this point, which requires varying levels of service deferrals to support staff redeployments.
Doctor Bonnie Henry outlined the weekend case reports, with the province counting 2,960 new cases of COVID reported over the weekend.
Of the new cases 696 were in Vancouver Coastal Region, 1845 in the Fraser Health Region, 108 in the Vancouver Island Health Region, 211 in the Interior Region.
In the North Health Region there were 100 new cases reported over the weekend (43 today), that brings the Northern British Columbia total to 6,838 cases of COVID since January for 2020.
There were eight additional deaths in the province, bringing the total to date to 1,538 British Columbians who have died.
Sadly among those who passed was a child under the age of two who has died of the virus, the Doctor noted that although there were pre existing health conditions related to the patient, it was COVID that claimed the child's life making for the youngest person to die in BC from the virus since it arrived in the province.
There are currently 5,872 cases of COVID-19 that are confirmed variants of concern in our province. Of the total cases, 191 are active and the remaining people have recovered. This includes 3,908 cases of the B.1.1.7 (U.K.) variant, 71 cases of the B.1.351 (South Africa) variant and 1,893 cases of the P.1 (Brazil) variant.
1,380,160 of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-SII COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in B.C., 87,970 of which are second doses.
As part of the ongoing vaccination strategy, Doctor Henry noted that the province was now accelerating the AstraZeneca COVID shot options, making it available to those 40 an over, with the vaccine also to be directed to the high priority areas of the province that have been identified.
She did note of the challenges that are being put o the provincial program through the availability of vaccines, but offered hope that the Federal government will be able to deliver as planned.
The importance of the vaccination program towards bringing the hospitalization rate down was a significant theme to the briefing today, with little in the way improvement in the current case count situation to be found in the province until the the end of May.
Towards a hope for better results into the late spring and summer, the Doctor did note of the success found in Prince Rupert from the recent vaccination program and how it has delivered improving results in the weeks since it took place.
"Two to three weeks after we reach a level of community immunization, we can expect an incremental impact not only on transmission in our communities but on and hospitalization. So what we expect to see, is that by the end of April we are going to start seeing more of a decrease in transmission and hospitalization for those most at risk those over 65 ... We've seen a dramatic drop off after about three weeks that remains sustained and low and we've also seen it in some of the communities where we've done community immunization. Particularly in Prince Rupert where we've seen cases drop off dramatically in the two to three week range" -- Doctor Bonnie Henry
Looking to the road ahead, Doctor Henry noted that the challenges remain for British Columbians but that the need to stay the course is key over the next five weeks.
"We all have this role in keeping ourselves, our loved ones, our communities safe. We now have extra tools to help us get along that journey, particularly we have immunization programs that are ramping up across this province to support us in getting to our post pandemic world. We have will have to live with COVID for a bit longer, we need to all put our efforts into combatting this virus and supporting each other as we get through this next five weeks" -- Doctor Henry
The full COVID statement for Monday can be reviewed here.
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| BC CDC data for British Columbia for April 19, 2021 |
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| BC CDC data for Northern Health region for April 19, 2021 |
Federal Government site
British Columbia Government site
The World Health Organization website also offers up the latest advisories on the global situation.
More from Northern Health can be reviewed here
You can review our archive of past statements and local information here.
Local governments and organizations have also provided for increased awareness of COVID-19 issues, those past advisories can be reviewed here.
For notes from across Canada and British Columbia we have been archiving the latest items through our political portal Darcy McGee
I would expect the city to close the docks to charter operators.
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