 Good afternoon, I'm Dr Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer for British Columbia and this is our COVID-19 report for June 9th. I'm very grateful to be speaking to you from the traditional territories of the Locungun speaking peoples of the Songhis and Esquimalt First Nations and we're very happy that we can have these important updates on these traditional lands. So today we have nine new people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and one additional epidemiologically linked case bringing our total new cases to 10 in the province and our total to 2,669 people in BC with COVID-19. That includes 908 people in the Vancouver coastal health region, 1,370 people in the Fraser health region, 130 people in the Vancouver coastal health region, 195 people in into your health region and 66 people in the northern health region. There are no new health care outbreaks. We continue to have four active outbreaks in our health care system in long-term care and we've also gone a day with no new cases in our long-term care. So we continue to have 340 residents of long-term care who have been affected and 218 staff. We have no new community outbreaks and we continue to monitor and support at the six remaining outbreaks that we are managing. So that leaves us with 183 active cases across the province of whom 16 are hospitalised, four of whom are in critical care or ICU. Another day, a very positive note, we have had no new deaths in the last 24 hours. So that leaves us 2,319 fully recovered from COVID-19 in BC. I'm very grateful that in recent weeks our numbers of new cases here in British Columbia continue to trend down and to be low. We have had, as we are aware, a number of small community outbreaks but we are at that point where we are able to find these quickly and that speaks to the work that we are all doing to follow the safe distancing rules but also to stay away from the virus and to get tested if we get sick. But I want everyone to understand that the COVID-19 pandemic around us is far from over. In British Columbia we continue to have small numbers of cases but across Canada and around the world it is still a major problem and is going to be in our communities around the world for some time now. The global case count continues and many regions are facing a resurgence in cases as they've taken measures to open up including regions that are very close to us in the United States and just yesterday was the highest single day for new cases globally since this pandemic started with over 136,000 people being affected and we know that there are new regions of the world that are being affected and when this is happening in one country we are all connected. We know from several months ago that it matters to us when something like this happens in China. It matters to us when something happens in Italy in Spain. It matters to us when it happens in the United States and here in Canada. And now we're looking at the challenges that are being faced by countries such as India and Brazil. There are no borders and it recognizes none of our geopolitical barriers that we put in place. Very early this morning I was on a call talking with my colleagues around the world with the WHO looking at how we are managing these cases and how we are supporting each other how we're doing public health activities what are the things that worked how can we become more efficient and more effective at case management at contact tracing and learning from each other and we'll be having a series of these over the next two days. But here in Canada we know that international flights are increasing and US border restrictions are going to be eased to allow for families who have been separated for these last few months to be able to reunite. These changes are not unexpected and they are important in helping us get our social fabric back together. We also know that many businesses and schools here in BC and across the country have reopened so our goal needs to be to learn to live safely with this virus to protect ourselves as much as possible as we do that. To do this we need to be watching closely what is happening globally what is happening in our own continent and what is happening here in the province and we need to take our measures that we have learned that we continue to need to protect communities, our families and our province and our path forward is to minimize, manage and modify as we need and that means we all need to continue to take the actions that we have been doing to minimize our numbers of close contacts and reduce the number of cases that we see in our community. We need to manage those clusters and outbreaks with rapid contact tracing with making sure that we in public health have the resources to stop expanding rapidly and we need to modify the measures we are all following as we need to given the situation that we are facing here in BC. What all of us can do today and every day is to continue to assess our own risks our own risks in our family our risks in our small communities particularly if we are going back to school, particularly if we have people who are more vulnerable to getting severe disease particularly if we have loved ones who are in different settings like care homes. We need to take precautions to protect ourselves and those around us whether we are at work, at home whether we are traveling, whether that is essential travel that we are doing as part of our work or whether it is being with our family over the summer and going to communities or traveling within BC. We need to continue without exception to stay away from others stay home if we are feeling well and anywhere in BC you can get tested if you have symptoms that are related to COVID-19 and no matter where you are we need to continue to follow our rules for safe social interactions so that smaller numbers, bigger spaces safe distances washing our hands regularly cleaning our environment and the added layer of wearing a mask if we are in those situations where we might not be able to maintain our safe distances. We have said all along that we are experiencing our pandemic here in BC and nation to nation province to province state to state our circumstances are unique but our efforts to keep our loved ones and our communities safe are shared amongst us all. We can protect our families our communities and our province by protecting each other and doing this by being thoughtful and understanding our words and in our actions and continuing to do it as we have been doing it here in BC by being kind to each other by being calm and by staying safe. Thank you I'm happy to take questions. Thank you as a reminder to everybody on the star one to enter the queue you are limited to one question I would also ask you please take your phones off mute you will not be audible until I call your name first question is from von Palmer Vancouver Sun Dr. Henry thanks for taking the question a statement from you and health minister Dick last Wednesday urged the organizers of peaceful protests to quote follow the provincial health officers order to limit gatherings to no more than 50 people are you disappointed that that order wasn't respected and do you know why it wasn't enforced yeah so we have always taken the approach of support and education for all of our orders and this is no different I am disappointed because I know there are very effective ways for small groups of people to demonstrate these important issues and to do it peacefully and to do it safely and I encourage people to find those ways there's lots of examples in the world and here at home so smaller groups keeping a distance from each other these are the things that we need to do to protect our communities and I was talking about that today talking about it with colleagues around the world and my colleagues in some states in the US are very concerned that the protests that are happening down there particularly when there's attempts to shut them down and use of things like gas to disperse crowds those are things that can provide an environment that would allow this virus to transmit and we are starting to see increases in some states that are very worrisome we have not yet seen anything like that here in Canada but certainly not in BC but we are watching carefully and I will say again find small impactful ways where you can stay separate from each other where you can have your voice heard in a way that's safe particularly for those people who are more likely to be disadvantaged by this pandemic and that includes some of the people for whom we are standing up and having our voices heard Next question is from Mary Griffin, check news Hi, thank you very much for taking my call Dr. Henry I've just been looking at a long-term care facility here at Victoria Mount St. Mary's which as of today sorry, yesterday they updated their protocol that now allows family members who meet their guidelines to go in to see some of their family members for the first time in three months but it just seems that this information about that there is a loosening on restrictions for family members is not very well known and the senior advocates indicated that the guidelines were loosened at the end of May on who can go in to the facilities and I just think some family members would be interested in knowing that they may be able to see their loved ones coming up particularly here on the island where we haven't had a new case in weeks So I would be cautious we've always said that there are some essential family members who need to provide care to people in long-term care and that has been decided on a local basis by the Regional Health Authority the MHOs we will have a provincial policy for general visiting with the appropriate caveats in place to protect that community and to protect the workers and to protect the people coming in as you know many people who visit a loved one in long-term care are potentially at risk themselves either because of age or because of issues of health and that will be coming on a provincial basis and we will be doing this in a coordinated way that supports all families and all long-term care homes so I think that is important to know and we have to be careful not to become complacent we know people move this virus is spread by people giving it to others most often the people that we are close to and we need to be able to be sure that we are not going to introduce it in an environment where others will be at risk and we have not seen a case thankfully on Vancouver Island for some time but that doesn't mean that we are free of risk because we know there needs to be movement back and forth to this island to support essential services for a variety of reasons and that as I mentioned when there is virus anywhere virus, risk everywhere Ethan Sawyer, CBC Hi Dr. Henry yesterday you mentioned a cluster of cases in the Fraser Health region associated with family gathering as more of us consider expanding our bubbles it might be helpful to know a few more details about that event such as how many people attended was it held outside or inside and how many people tested positive for COVID-19 after attending Yes, so I can't tell you all of the details but I know it was a family gathering that was a combination of inside and outside and that there was approximately 30 people and at least 15 of them have tested positive so that is a warning sign to us all and it's not that somebody intentionally brings that into their community to their loved ones to their family this is something that we have been seeing around the world that that is one of the most common ways that it gets transmitted it's the people that we are closest to and spend time with so these are the things that we have been talking about about the importance of outside but still maintaining distance not sharing food in terms of having buffets because that's a way where we pass things on to each other potentially but the most important thing is the time that we spend in close proximity to somebody even if it is outside if you're spending time in close contact talking to somebody it is still risky and that of course is our concern right now so we go back to the basics that we need to remember maintaining our safe distances keeping our bubble small right now and this will be something that we'll need to continue so that we don't get these explosive outbreaks that can potentially happen we know that people in our homes people in our families many of them are essential workers whether it's healthcare workers whether they're truckers coming back from the US with essential goods whether they're people back and forth to Alberta for example so there are many reasons why people need to travel and we need to be aware of the risks in our communities and the risks in our family and it is why I've been so fussed about about the limits on gatherings or environments where we inadvertently spread it to the people that we are closest to Richard Sisman Global News Dr. Henry Workfake BC I'll thank you for taking the question Workfake BC has issued some guidelines around television and film do you have an expectation of when we could potentially start seeing that sector back up and is there anything that stands out for you as concerning about the operation of the television and film sector in Bruce Columbia? Yes, so I actually haven't seen the details yet of the guidance, I know they were working on them that is the plan for our next phase, so phase 3 we're not there yet we're still in our second incubation period but as we see the numbers are looking relatively good so that's a possibility we still however have challenges with we are not having non-essential workers or family reunification the restrictions we have on our borders right now, so that is an area that will need to be addressed as well we need to consider where people are coming from, so if there are people coming from a variety of places into our into our province whether it's from the US or from countries in Europe or China they bring their risk with them so we need to ensure that we continue and right now there's still a quarantine order federally and there's a provincial order that people need to self-isolate for 14 days after coming so all of those provisions need to be taken into account as well Next question is from Marcella Bernardo News 1130 Dr. Henry, I was hoping to ask you today a little bit more about what you just talked about with the film industry but other industries like restaurants theaters and businesses that depend on numbers being higher to survive will there come a time that large facilities with enough space to accommodate the 2 meter distance rule will be allowed to have more than 50 people You know those are things that we're looking at and currently right now there are provisions for some restaurants depending on the size that they have right now the restriction is on 50% of occupancy plus the distancing and the small numbers of people so the whole idea behind this is looking at risk and every time that we allow more people to be in a closed space together in particular allow more people to have those important visits in long-term care homes we are running the risk of more cases and more outbreaks and so it becomes a balancing of that it's not about trying to punish businesses or it's trying to find ways that we can safely enjoy those businesses enjoy restaurants safely go to retail stores safely visit our loved ones in care homes as best we possibly can but we must recognize that every time we do that there is a potential risk of transmission even though we have low numbers that we found here in BC that doesn't mean that we're out of danger with that so we will be continuously reviewing these things and we've been at as I've said when we started this we're making it up in a sense as we go based on best evidence that we have from around the world and what others are doing and how it's working and these early morning calls that I had with my colleagues around the world is ways that we help exchange information and understand what are the things that make a difference so we will be absolutely revisiting the guidance around restaurants we'll be revisiting all of the guidance that we have we're doing a review nationally about numbers in terms of mass gatherings and is there a cutoff that has some science behind it now, now that we've seen what's happened in other countries but then if I you know we go back to where we need to stay the course we will not be changing the fact that we need to maintain those safe distances we need to maintain the hand hygiene we need to be fastidious about staying away from any place if we're feeling unwell we won't be changing those and we won't be changing those anywhere in the world in the near term and I've told some stories some of them are events that happened here but very recently in Germany there was a church gathering where they were supposedly maintaining their safe distances and 107 of the congregants and 3 people died so you know these are the things that we're learning from that there are certain things that we do in a faith based setting where singing and singing together chanting can increase our risk of spreading this over larger distances so we need to be mindful of those concerns as we move forward but for now we will be absolutely reviewing things as we go Bob Macken break your news Good afternoon you talked yesterday about consistency in doing things and reducing chains of contact but thousands of people as you've seen across Canada are not following the orders against mass gatherings the Prime Minister attended one and here in BC the MP for Richmond Centre and a Vice President of the VGH and UBC hospital foundation were in a group shoulder to shoulder with no masks for a photo op I don't see much resistance to health authorities to this or are you content to let this happen so as to eventually achieve herd immunity No our aim is not to achieve herd immunity through infecting people we've seen that that can be deadly to young people as well as to those who are more vulnerable more at risk I can only say that our approach in BC has always been to support, to educate to make sure people have the means they need to do and to know what they need to do and ask them to do that and to remind people of the importance of it and I continue to do that and I would continue to talk to leaders in our communities about the best ways that we can fight the important causes like anti-racism causes in a way that does not add to any risk in our communities Next question is from Lisa Cordesco CHLY Thank you Good afternoon Dr Henry If I understand it correctly there has never been a provincial health order banning film production or really visits to care homes since your just policies individually taken on so in reality those sectors can resume activities without your approval am I correct Not entirely no we have had an order around both local orders and provincial orders around protection of long-term care homes and part of that is restriction on visitors so that is as well we've had restrictions on essential working but it's a slightly grey area in terms of things like TV and film production but that has been under our direction not, it's a too risky a venture for the way it was in the past and they need to come up with ways of doing it that meet the criteria that we have in place to protect people and the other part of course of the film industry is there are restrictions that are law if you will around international travel around people coming into BC and to Canada and there's requirements around quarantine that need to be put in place around those as well Binder Sajjan, CTV Hi Dr. Henry there have been increasing calls for disaggregated data as it pertains to racialized communities and how they are impacted by COVID-19 I know you've talked about this before I'm just wondering if you can just let us know where BC is at and how you respond to critics who say that it's a disservice not to have that information we absolutely agree with that and that's why we have been putting in place a number of things and we initially started collecting information, case information on this virus our case report forms did not include race-based information or disaggregated information by race or ethnicity or socioeconomic status or job in many cases so that is something that is important and we recognize that we have from the very beginning collected information on indigeneity and we continue to do that in partnership with Métis Nation BC and the First Nations Health Authority and that has been really important in helping us understand the impact in those communities but we have two initiatives that I mentioned yesterday but we'll talk about again one is the survey that we did that we had started planning for this from very early on and that is understanding the impact that both COVID has had and the measures we've put in place because we know both of those have impacts on different communities and we are collecting some very important disaggregated information by race, by ethnicity by community, by socioeconomic status because that does help us understand the impacts that it's had on various different communities across the province in addition we are doing a lot of work actually with my team with the VCCDC looking at what we're calling the unintended consequences both positive and negative because we want to be able to highlight going forward what are the positive things that we can do more of and what are the negative things that we need to address and who is differentially affected by those so we are doing that and in addition we're looking at proxies for certain communities by being able to report at a smaller geographic level and we talked a little bit about that last week and we'll be presenting data at a smaller level to get a better understanding of that in the coming days as well Keith Baldrick, Global News Hi Dr. Henry, thanks for taking my question the closure of the Canada-U.S. border is set to expire on June 21 Reuters news agency today is reporting both governments have agreed to extend that until at least late July just like what your take is on that I assume that's something you would support and given what's going on in the states right now with 14 states reporting record high 7 day averages of COVID-19 cases what's when you talk to your counterparts in the states and public health what are they telling you what's going on there they're asking you for advice given how well we're doing here that's a good question so yes we are very concerned obviously about the border I think it is important I've said this before about family reunification and making sure we're putting provisions in place that allow families to come together again and that has started as a I guess midnight tonight so we'll see what is important about our borders and what we see from our data is and the genomic epidemiology we presented last week is that we need to be able to manage people who come across their borders whether it's international from Brazil or from Europe or from China or from the United States and we will continue to do that and work with our federal counterparts on that so I wasn't aware of the extension yet but I think we need to be very cautious about allowing people who are here as tourists coming across the border and I think that's the last thing we need right now we need to focus on families we need to focus on essential workers and being able to support them and in terms of talking with my colleagues across the US and I talk regularly with my colleagues in the Pacific Northwest in Alaska we have weekly calls and we all exchange information and we're learning from each other and it has been very concerning Washington State, Oregon and Alaska starting to see upticks more concerning is some of the states where they have had early openings and I think thinking about the states like Georgia where they've had a dramatic increase and their numbers are as high as they were when they put their lockdown measures in place in March and it is concerning part of that is related to increased testing and so that is what we're seeing in a number of states as well but much of it is a true increase though particularly my colleagues in Washington State are dealing with some of the same things we are in terms of outbreaks in food processing facilities so the numbers I have a better idea of they are getting a handle as we are thankfully on some of the issues around our long-term care homes and the population that's affected in states like Georgia and Arizona is a new population they are not seeing as many hospitalizations but it may just be that that's what we call a leg indicator maybe sometime before that shows up I will say as well one of the biggest concerning areas in the United States is some of the American Indian communities both in the Navajo and the Hopi Nation in Arizona and I know they are spending a lot of time trying to support those communities we are learning a lot about this virus as we go and discussions with my colleagues around the world there is still much we don't know and I know there has been a bit of controversy about how much is spread asymptomatically et cetera but we are learning a lot about what are the things that work to help manage it and there has been some great studies that have come out that have shown that the distancing that we put in place does work it saves lives and those are the things that we are trying to titrate and put in place in ways that are more strategic so that we don't have to go back to some of those broad stroke measures that we took in March and we have lots of discussions about trying to support each other in doing that we have time for one more question this afternoon for any reporters to ask a question there will be a statement released later today for recommendations on protecting families and communities from COVID-19 visit bccdc.ca for non-medical questions about the province's COVID-19 response visit gov.bc.ca forward slash COVID-19 and for a full listing of the provincial health officers orders visit gov.bc.ca forward slash PHO guidance last question is from Liza Euston News 1130 Hi Henry, I know you've mentioned in the past that work is being done on sports teams and when sports teams can work or get on the field again and how that's going to work wondering about swimming pools is there any chance the swimming pools will be able to be open this summer yeah absolutely I know they're working on that too that is some of the things that we've learned that this virus doesn't transmit in especially chlorinated or ozonated water so yes the risk of course is people coming together around the pool in the locker room and those things so there will need to be measures in place to reduce numbers to make sure that we're not having close contact with people in the locker rooms and I know that's being worked on but I absolutely I think that's something we can look forward to in the coming weeks that's all the time we have for today