 Good afternoon. My name is Adrian Dix, I'm BC's Minister of Health. To my right is Dr Bonnie Henry, BC's provincial health officer. So our COVID-19 briefing, weekly briefing for Tuesday, October 19, 2021. We're honored to be here on the territories of the Lekwungen speaking people, of the Songhees and the Esquimalt First Nations. Dr Henry has a presentation to make with respect to COVID-19 in BC and a situation report on K-12 schools. And I'll be back to report on some of our regular, my regular weekly items as well. With that, it's my honor to introduce Dr Bonnie Henry. Thank you very much and good afternoon. So we're here this afternoon to share the latest updates on our COVID-19 public health response. And I want to start by just acknowledging, as you might have seen earlier today, I announced changes to the provincial health officer order, which lifts the capacity limits at some of the areas of the country. And I'm happy to be here on the stage to share with you some of the updates on COVID-19, which lifts the capacity limits at some of the organized events and gatherings. With the implementation of the vaccination card and the checking of full vaccine status. So effective October 25, one day after the full vaccine requirement comes into effect, we'll be able to increase to 100 capacity at indoor sporting events, indoor concerts, theaters, movie theaters, dance and symphony events, and some of the great arts and sports that we've been missing, as well as indoor organized events such as weddings, funeral receptions and parties. I will, as well, we're going to be lifting that restriction, the requirement that everybody be seated at restaurants and pubs to allow a little bit more freedom of movement with the fact that everybody in those situations will be fully vaccinated. I will remind people, of course, that the other public health restrictions will be fully vaccinated. Other public health restrictions remain in place, including the indoor mask requirement when you're moving about. And these changes are applicable where proof of vaccine status is being checked and also where there are no regional health orders in place. And as you know, we've been monitoring that very carefully and regional orders are in place in some areas in northern health, interior health and Fraser East, for example. And this is an important first step of that and we'll be monitoring carefully and looking at whether we can take away additional restrictions depending on how things evolve over the next few weeks. In addition to the changes this morning, I want to share today our first school situation report as we talked about a number of weeks ago, we've been trying to collate information in a more systematic way than we were able to do last year and to be able to provide that information on a monthly basis so people have a good sense of what's happening in our schools. So this first report looks at the impact of COVID-19 on children and K-12 schools. It will be posted after the briefing today on the BCCDC website and there's quite a bit more detail in it, so I encourage people to go there. And we will have additional reports released on a monthly basis. We are able to collect more information and get the systems in place to put this together, we'll have more information available as well. But first off, I wanted to start with looking at presenting the update of the age-base cases that we've seen. So this is the rate in the 12 to 17-year-olds, particularly in the areas where their vaccination is high in that age group. One of the things that we want to do is look at those case rates and see the impact of where people are being infected. So we look at the age, we look at where the geography, as well as what's happening in the communities around those schools. And as we can see, across BCC, we've seen a decrease in young children and the school-age children as well across BCC, but particularly, this has been pronounced in interior health and northern health where we saw the biggest increases. And certainly at the beginning of the school year, it was a dramatic increase in the interior health that we were seeing primarily, again, related to the increase we were seeing in community across interior health that started in August. And that's now taking a downturn. Northern health continues to remain higher than in other parts of the province, but we know that that is a reflection again of what we're seeing in the north and reasons why we brought in additional measures in much of the north last week. We do see, however, that those rates remain stable in the vaccinated population and the 12- to 17-year-olds. And they remain low in the areas where we have very high immunization rates in families and communities, particularly Vancouver Coastal and Island Health. So this gives you a good sense of where we are now. This tells the picture a little bit of what we're seeing and why we're seeing this. So what it shows in the light blue line is the percent positivity, the seven-day moving average of daily test positivity in the different age groups. And the darker blue line tells you the rate of tests. So this is a summary of some of the information I presented a few weeks ago, which showed that we have a dramatic increase in number of tests being done, particularly in school-age kids, but also in younger children, zero to four. And this reflects people coming together again and going back to school. But it also reflects that we're starting to see other respiratory viruses causing infection in children and in communities. And that's adenoviruses, some enteroviruses that cause respiratory infections, a little bit of para-influenza. We have not yet seen a lot of influenza, but we did have our first influenza positive in quite some time just this week. So we'll be carefully watching that. But what this shows us is that across the board we had an increase in rates of testing in this age group. And we had a steady decrease in the percent positivity. So it is telling us that we're looking for this in younger people. And we're finding it. And those rates have now come down. One of the other things, of course, we're very concerned about is are we seeing severe illness in children? And we've been watching what's happened in other countries, particularly the U.S. where there was a dramatic increase in hospitalization in school-age children. We have not thankfully seen that here in BC, but we will continue to watch. We have seen very few children admitted to hospital, thankfully. In the past week, we have had one new admission in, so we've had five new admissions in the zero to four age group. One in the five to 11 age group. And one person, 12 to 17, who were admitted to hospital. And there were no admissions in the school-age children to ICU in the past week. So that's important for us to watch as well. Again, in the areas where we have children who are immunized, the 12 to 17 age group, we can see that hospitalization is much, much less common, even though it's rare across the board, less common in youth who have at least one dose of vaccine compared to unvaccinated young people. Again, this is something that is important for us to consider now that we know that Pfizer has submitted the complete package to Health Canada for approval in younger children. And it reminds us again the importance of protection of children from transmission, not only to prevent hospitalization, but to prevent that transmission of disease in these important settings. Finally, in the report, what you'll see is a more in-depth analysis of the clusters we are seeing in schools, particularly interior, in the interior health region, where we had those high rates of transmission in the community, and the most increase in child-age infections. And so there were 80 clusters where COVID transmission may have occurred in the school setting during the first five weeks of the school year this year. So a total of 314 cases were linked to these clusters, which is about a quarter of the cases among that age group of children in the region. And cluster, as we've defined it, is within a 14 period of time. And so there were 12% 46 schools in the interior health region where a cluster was reported. And importantly, we look at how much transmission is happening, because we want to compare that this year to what we were seeing in the last school year. And the data that is in the report that you can see from last year, on average, we had, or the median, a number of people that were involved in a cluster was one last year, and we are seeing a slight increase this year, where the median number is three. But it still remains small, and across the board in the province, less than one third of schools have had a cluster. And I think that's important. We can see that these are always stressful situations, and we know there was a lot of anxiety going back into school this year, and it's important for us to provide this information as best we can, so people know the number of people that were involved in this, and it's important for us to understand what we are seeing. So for what we can see is that across the board, the number of schools affected have been about a third, which is about the same as what we saw last year, and there is slightly increased transmission, but it's mostly controlled, and again, most of the infections, the source of infection for school-aged children, is outside of the classroom. We need to work with our schools, with our educators, with the teams to make sure that we can get as much information as quickly as possible to parents. I will say again that we know it takes time to do those case investigations, and that parents are often the first to know if their child is ill, and so we need to work together to make sure we're taking all of those precautions so that we can keep our schools active and functioning, and all the important things that we need to do to make sure that we are doing the right thing. The other, of course, things that we've been, in terms of vaccines that we've been working on this week, we have a few encouraging updates, we've been monitoring, again, the outbreaks and cases in long-term care facilities as we've started to roll out the booster doses in those settings, again, we see that they reflect the community rates of transmission. The measures that we've put in place, as we've done with COVID vaccines, the first time around, to ensure that our most vulnerable have that maximum protection. And we've started with those facilities where there is a risk, where we've seen a person, either a staff person or a resident as a case, and also prioritize those facilities that started early and had the reduced interval to make sure that we can provide protection as quickly as possible, and our teams are working hard to get those doses into arms as soon as possible. I will say the other part that we have around our long-term care, as we know in a week now, since the requirement for workers in long-term care and assisted living to be vaccinated, and that is going very well, it's that extra layer of protection. But we've also recognized the importance of upping the infection control precautions that are being taken, even with the COVID-19 infection, knowing that everybody needs to take these measures right now, so that our seniors and elders in care can be as protected as possible. Having said that, we are also looking at where other booster doses might be needed in our community, for those who are most vulnerable, and we'll have more to say about that later on this week. In addition to encouraging everyone to get their COVID-19 vaccine, today marks the public launch of our influenza immunization program, and we know last winter, despite the challenges with COVID-19, we had very few, actually no active cases of influenza from outside. We did have a few influenza swabs that tested positive, but they were mostly from young people who received the active vaccine, so that is good. Partly that was because of our high level of immunization, as well as the fact there were many public health restrictions in place through that winter season, which limited our ability to move around and spread, and particularly international travel restrictions, which we know is one of the ways influenza spreads around the world. This year is a different situation. Not only are we needing to take precautions because of how easy this new delta strain spreads, but the risk is also very high, and we know that some of the international travel is coming back. I am strongly encouraging everyone in BC this year to be immunized against influenza as a way of protecting yourself from this other serious respiratory infection, but also reducing the respiratory transmission risk in our community, so that we are taking that burden off our health care system, as well. The influenza vaccine is available for free for anybody over six months of age for whom it is recommended, but particularly people who have underlying health conditions or who work with and care for people who have compromised immune systems or underlying health conditions, it is most important that you protect yourself and them from influenza as well this year. As anticipated, we have seen once again the recent announcement from the United States that when it comes to international acceptance of what is considered fully immunized, the situation continues to evolve, and quite quickly, but I was very pleased to see the U.S. is now in step in recognizing the approach we have taken here in Canada, and is accepting all of the mixed doses that we have had here, including AstraZeneca and different mRNA doses, and I think it is a credit to the work that we have done to show the effectiveness of these vaccine combinations, and I am just very pleased that means people in BC who are fully immunized will now be able to travel to our neighbour in the south as well. It is further evidence, of course, that all of the available vaccines approved for use here in Canada are safe and highly effective no matter what combination you have received, so I think that is very encouraging news that is starting to be available nationally. The one other thing I wanted to address today is questions that I continue to get about post-infection immunity, and really the bottom line is from scientists around the world that there is no consensus yet, as we are learning about this virus, on the strength and durability of post-infection immunity, and there is no good way to measure that strength and durability over time. Yes, we do absolutely recognize that most people have some immunity for some period of time after being infected, and early on when we had limited supplies of vaccine, we didn't prioritise people who had a recent infection within three months, because we knew that most of them had some degree of protection against this virus. But we have also seen studies that have shown that that protection can be very variable depending on the type of infection you had, depending on your own strength of your immune system. And there have been some small studies that have showed that some people do have very long and durable protection post-infection. However, it is impossible to prove how strong and how long this protection lasts in individuals over time. And because we cannot know that, and we do see people having repeated infections that can lead to this illness and hospitalization, that we are airing on the side of the protection with the known amount of antigen that is in a vaccine. So that gives the most prudent response to be able to protect people with a known amount, with a known period of time. So again, for people who have had a previous COVID infection, it is still recommended that you receive a full dose, a full series of any of the vaccines that are proof of use here in Canada. So every week we do stand here before you to provide you with the latest updates, the latest research and information that we have, and every week we have lots to share. This is because we are seeing that this pandemic continues to evolve. And we are trying to evolve as best we can to support the needs that people have so that we can do the things that we need to do to protect our loved ones. And continue to try and live our lives within the context of the pandemic that we are managing right now. Here in BC, people have faced this storm with compassion and determination. And even though we know that things are not where we want them to be right now, we know that the vaccine is giving us good strong protection and we can see that in the results, we can see that in our lives and in our lives. And we are trying to do things that we love with other people that are also protected. And we need to ensure that we are working for each other and doing our part that benefits everybody. So thank you very much for that. And I will hand it over to Minister Gex. Thank you very much, Dr. Henry, throughout this pandemic all of us have been taking steps to keep our community safe. And this fall there is another step health care workers support one another. And that step is to book an appointment to get an influenza vaccine. I'm happy to share that every person over six months of age has the option to get a flu vaccine free of charge. That reflects our termination to have the largest influenza flu vaccine effort in British Columbia's history. Two years ago and in previous years, British Columbia received about 1.5 million doses of vaccine. This year, the number will be 2.4 million. That's 200,000 more than last year when we got extra doses. And that reflects the need right now, right now, to ensure that we are protected and as protected as possible as a community from respiratory illness this fall. But the challenge of COVID-19 is significant and we want to reduce other challenges the health care system faces. That's important. But as well, we want to make sure that we stay healthy and to stay fit throughout this winter, coming fall, winter, and spring. It's more important to take these steps and ever, you can get your flu shot by contacting your local pharmacy, your primary care provider, through a public health unit, or through other health abilities. Last year, pharmacies did a record number of flu shots for the first time. I believe the majority of influenza shots took place in community pharmacy last year. I think it was in the neighborhood of 1.1 million of the doses that we delivered last year, which was roughly 1.5, 1.6 million. And I expect that to be the same this year. I believe 800,000 doses are out with pharmacy right now and out in the community. And so it's time to book. It's time to get your shots. We know that vaccines, flu vaccines and COVID-19 vaccines provide protection to the wider community. And that's why as well. And this has been at the foundation of our strategy. As you know, yesterday, because provide this information regularly, 88% of people in critical care due to COVID-19, where people are not fully vaccinated. This represents a small share of the overall population, it's over 16%. That's how this group is. But the dramatic share of critical care cases and of hospitalizations, the data shows that unvaccinated people are 40 times more likely to end up hospitalized. Due to COVID-19 than people who are vaccinated 40 times. The impact of the number of people in our hospitals with COVID-19, the overwhelming majority of whom are unvaccinated can be seen with the number of people needing to be transferred, for example, out of northern health right now. Since September 5th, the total of 65 patients in critical conditions have been transferred to other regions of the province that continues to test our healthcare system everywhere. It demonstrates how we're all in for one another during this pandemic. But it also shows the need for all of us now to get vaccinated, get vaccinated against COVID-19 and join the 89.2% of people who have received their first dose immunization over 12 from COVID-19. And to get vaccinated a second time, join the almost 84% of people who are fully vaccinated. And to do that as soon as possible. And to do that as soon as possible. On Tuesdays we report on the continued postponement of some surgeries in some locations in BC. Each and every person who has their surgery postponement will be called to rebook their surgery. That has always been our commitment and will continue to be a commitment that is fulfilled. Your surgery is important. And we will get you your surgery. The news from Interior Health that it has started to call patients to rebook their surgeries and welcome news that restores us all and for patients a phone call that reduces unwanted anxiety and allows considerations of the next step in their health progress and experience. I want to report that on the surgical postponement over the past two weeks, that is October 3rd to October 16th. During that reporting period, health authorities postponed 556 non-urgent elective surgeries or scheduled surgeries. That is 15 in Fraser Health, 307 in Northern Health, that is 107, 127 in Vancouver Coastal Health, 307 in Vancouver Island Health. No surgeries were postponed in Interior Health or the Provincial Health Services Authority. From September 5th to October 16th, there have been 1,940 surgical postponements over that period as we had the numbers off through week until week of reporting. That said, surgeries are continuing to rebook their surgeries. That said, surgeries are continuing across the province. From September 19th to October 2nd, health authorities report 12,084 surgeries were completed. This reporting period would be less. It is less than we would ordinarily see in the period as it includes the health authorities observance of the national day for truth and reconciliation. For those who deliver surgeries to do the work we are counting on them to do, we know they are counting on us to do the work we are counting on them to do. Stay safe. When it comes to contact tracing in BC, there are now 1,522 contact tracing staff in place across five regional health authorities and the Provincial Health Services Authority as of October 18th. 83 more were added over the past week. That's 507 in Fraser Health, 204 in Interior Health, 208 in Northern Health, 205 in Vancouver Coastal Health, 143 in Vancouver Island Health, and 255 in the Provincial Health Services Authority. Getting through the pandemic has always been a team effort and all of those individuals, all of them have demonstrated their commitment. I want to end our doing, I think, remarkable work in supporting people at a difficult moment, especially when their COVID test comes back positive. I want to report on a couple of other issues to you, first is hospital bed occupancy to give you a sense of where we are on our base occupancy right now. Base bed occupancy rate is 95.1%. That means there are 449 vacant base beds on a total of 9,229 base beds. Our total surge bed occupancy, as you recall, the total surge beds is 2,353. Our vacant surge beds are 1,856. So, roughly 9,280. Roughly 9,280. Roughly 9,280. Our vacant surge beds are 1,856. Our vacant surge beds are 1,856. Our vacant surge beds are 1,880. Roughly is the current total census across BC hospitals. In terms of critical care, as you recall, we have 510 total base beds in critical care across British Columbia. At present, 55 of those base beds are vacant. We have added 218 total surge beds to critical care in BC. 183 of those are vacant. And so, if you look at that, it's our total census in terms of critical care, all things. This is COVID-19 and everything else is 490 as of yesterday evening. And I wanted to report on one last thing, and it's an important thing that's coming up. Dr. Henry talked about the significant effort to vaccinate staff in long-term care and in assisted living. As we reported last week, 96% of staff had been at least partially vaccinated in long-term care, 97% in assisted living. We have the preliminary numbers for health authority, healthcare workers across the system. These are excluding long-term care and assisted living staff. And if you look across the system, so this is based on a unique count of 129,924 of the number, 121,048 are fully vaccinated. That's 93%. 3,364 are partially vaccinated. And the number of people who are fully vaccinated is 1,924. And 4%, or 5,512, are not vaccinated. So we're hopeful, of course, that people will move to get vaccinated and comply with the upcoming order with respect to ensuring that everybody in our healthcare system, everywhere in our hospital system, all of our direct care staff working for health authorities are vaccinated. Those are the numbers, those are the relevant numbers for them. If you look at it by health authorities, it's 2% not vaccinated in Fraser Health, 7% not vaccinated in Interior Health, 6% not vaccinated in Northern Health, 3% in the provincial health services authority, 3% in Vancouver Coastal Health, and 5% in the Vancouver Island Health Authority. So essentially what we're seeing, that 6% mark, is a very similar number to what we saw in a similar number to what we saw in a similar number to what we saw in a similar number to what we saw in assisted living and in long-term care. I want to thank each and every one of us who has taken that option, who has joined the path of getting vaccinated, reducing transmission, and of getting back to the things that we love to do together. I think the effort by everybody in the healthcare system is all in right now, all in for regions that are struggling more with COVID-19 transmission right now, all in for everything they can. Especially when you're asked to get vaccinated, and that's everybody right now, except those under 12, and to encourage and support one another as we deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in BC. We're happy to take your questions. Thank you. A reminder to reporters on the line, please press star 1 to enter the queue. You will be limited to one question and one follow-up. Our first question goes to Dr Henry about the data at schools. Is this acknowledgement that the mask policy in schools worked considering we see the drop-off around the same time it came into place? Was the province too slow to put that in place? But also considering we've seen a drop-off in numbers, should we when school districts are asking you for advice about what they should do about mandates for staff in a school setting, Dr Henry, what advice are you giving them about mandates of vaccine within the school system? If we look at masks, and one of the reasons we broke it down by those different age groups, 5 to 8 and 11, because we have a mass mandate from the very beginning from last June for the 9 to 11 and above. We don't see a significant difference in both the increase or the decrease in those two different age groups. I do believe masks are important. I've said that many times in certain environments, and yes, it is important, particularly when you're moving around, around people outside the classroom, et cetera. So it is an important, one of the important tools, but it does tell us that the other measures we have in place are also important in the schools. And if we look at the rates in the adults in the system and the 12 to 17-year-olds in the school system, again, we see that there's less transmission, the more young people and staff who are immunized. I think there are a number of different considerations that school districts have, and there's been a lot of work with the team to provide a rational advice to school districts. And, yes, I do think it's important that we get as high immunization rates as possible, because we know how disruptive it is to be able to both education and growth and wellness for children and for families if schools are disrupted. So schools can be disrupted for a number of reasons. We have seen and we continue to see that it's very rarely related to widespread outbreaks, but it can be related to transmission or staff being off ill or having to isolate. So those are considerations that school boards have to make, and we are looking at all of the aspects and options that they have for staff across the province. Richard, do you have a follow-up? Can you explain to me what data you're seeing to give you confidence to go to 100% capacity for these indoor events? We've just not been seeing transmission when the vaccine card is needed. Also, hoping for clarification, I understand you've removed the limits around people being able to get up and move around, but it's also important to have the data to dance in that regard. And also, could you provide an update on how many people have died that are fully immunized? That's one of the stats we don't get, and do we know of the death numbers, how many of those people are fully immunized? Thank you. I can start with the last one. I don't have the number off the top of my head. It is part of the data that we present in the public health service on weekly. It has a table that tells you exactly how many and by what age group. We have had deaths in vaccinated, partially vaccinated and unvaccinated people. So it does vary. And it varies. It reflects, of course, being in long-term care homes where we see that the virus can spread very rapidly and there's a very high rate of immunization in older people, our seniors and people who are in long-term care and long-term care homes. And tragically, that's a large proportion of the deaths we've seen recently, older people who are in long-term care. And we count a death in a long-term care home during an outbreak. If somebody dies, even if they don't have symptoms of COVID, we know that there are asymptomatic infections in people, particularly if they've been vaccinated. But if it occurs within 30 days, I can get it to you afterwards. In terms of the restrictions, we had always intended to lift the capacity restrictions in these seeded events. So the hockey game, the theater, movie theaters, once we got to the point where it was only fully vaccinated people who were in those settings. So it doesn't reduce the risk to zero. It means that we are mitigating the risk. We know that the risk of people who are fully vaccinated, transmitting the virus, and getting sick is much, much less. So that reduces the risk enough that we are confident we can, when we get to that point, have more people in those environments. And the restrictions on movements was one of the things that we've heard from restaurants and pubs, particularly, that it's a challenge for them to stop people from talking to a person and lead to challenges for staff who are already bearing the brunt of people who don't like the concept of the vaccine card. So we are not seeing transmission in those settings where the vaccine card is used, where people are checking vaccine status. So, again, it's another one of those things that we follow the data that we are hoping to make it a little easier for restaurants and pubs in that respect. And I think that we can go to as far as having lots of people together dancing. And, you know, I hate to say it, but, yeah, so other settings that we are not yet at the point where we think we can get back to some of the normal activities, and I know it's going to be hardest, particularly for nightclubs and some of the bars where this is an important part of the atmosphere in those areas. And I think that we will be continuing to monitor right now. Our health system is stretched. We know that the hospitalizations are high with COVID, and some of that is supporting areas of the province where immunization rates are still not high enough to stop that transmission, that rapid transmission to people, and we are seeing high rates of hospitalization still. So, yes, we are watching that for the next few months, but it's going to be a challenge for all of us, and I just encourage people for those over 85%, almost 90% of people now who are vaccinated, you know, go out and support your local restaurant, your local pub, use your vaccine card, go to the theater, go back to the arts, and it's important for those groups to be able to have shows where we can have people safely sitting. And I think that we need to be aware of those requirements for indoor settings like these are still in place. For the next question, we go to Shannon Patterson, CTV. Oh, hi, I'd love to hear from both of you guys on this. There has just been an injunction filed in the Supreme Court to try to force Raleigh's restaurant in hope to, I guess, shut down or follow health orders. And Minister Dix, why has this taken so long? I think people have been super frustrated to hear they believe they find $100 a day while they've been ignoring the order with no business license and no liquor license. I just want both of your reaction on that. This is somebody who, a facility or a restaurant that's been defying this for some time, they've hosted political parties that are trying to do a measured response to these things. And Fraser Health has been, our environmental health officers have been working with the restaurant, have been making sure they absolutely are clear on what the requirements are. And as you say, they have been actively resisting. And there was a group of business leaders in hope. The community, the business association are all very upset about this. They are all very upset about the impact of this type of defiance on their communities. And we did serve them with a closure order, along with pulling their liquor license as well as their business license. And the next step, of course, is enforcement. And we need the support of the courts, hopefully, to uphold that. We are trying to balance the need for public safety and making sure that we don't put our hands on the table. I know some of them have had some challenges in dealing with the restaurant and people in the restaurant. So we don't want to create a situation where things are not safe. But we do, we recognize that these are, these are not ideal, clearly. It shows people that they don't respect their neighbors. They don't respect their business neighbors. They don't respect their community. And that is something that we are hoping that we will get an injunction to help support us in closing. As Dr. Henry has outlined, there has been a progressive approach to dealing with this restaurant and with others. And now we are at the injunction phase. And of course, we are disappointed to be at this phase because health authorities, as you know, there are measures in place in the Eastern Fraser Valley right now because of high case counts of COVID-19. So you bet I understand that businesses and communities are frustrated when the vaccine card, which has been overwhelmingly taken up by, we are going to close in on, I think it is 3.6, 3.7 million people have got their car and are supporting this measure. And it is a necessary measure to help us to have things such as sit down at restaurant meals in a difficult and challenging time of pandemic. I understand that frustration. We go through a legal process in each case, but I have to tell you that it would be my expectation, although that this approach will be dealt with by other health authorities as well if necessary. What has been successful in many cases is engaging with, for example, restaurant owners, but other business owners, and we have seen that work in a number of cases, and obviously it is preferable to seeking injunctions when we have, of course, many, many other things to do, but the injunction, Fraser Health, in this case, needed to seek the injunction and they are. And hopefully that sends a message about our determination. But it is also our expectation in a pandemic that this is what we owe one another to follow public health rules, which keep people healthy and safe in a difficult time. And it is our expectation that people will do that. Shannen, do you have a follow-up? I have a question for a colleague. Sources tell us that staffed ICU beds are now fully occupied in the province and that there is simply no capacity left. What are you going to do about that? Are you trying to bring in more staff from outside BC or have you asked Ontario for help? I just laid out, I'll give you the numbers in detail, I'll give them to you by health authority in terms of critical care, hospital occupancy rates. We have 510 total base beds in our province. 136 of those are in Fraser Health. 14 are currently vacant. That is 89.7%. In Interior Health there are 87 total base beds. 11 are vacant. That is 87.4%. In Northern Health there are 40 base beds. 11 are vacant. 72.5%. In the PHSA there are 12 total base beds. None are currently vacant. That is 100% occupancy of those base beds. Although none of their surge beds are occupied. In Vancouver Coastal Health there are 146 base beds and 8 are vacant. In Vancouver Health 89 base beds and 11 are vacant. Part of the reason, for example, in Vancouver Island you see that high utilization in Vancouver Coastal Health is that we are moving patients from our province and other communities into those health authorities. This is a very challenging situation it is. Our total census in terms of critical care right now. This is all in COVID-19 and not COVID-19. I am just doing the math here but it is 419. Which is more I think than it was last week. I think it was when I reported last week about 470. That shows what the trend is. It is a very challenging situation and it is of course in some communities. For example, University Hospital of Northern British Columbia and Prince George which takes patients from other places and other busy ICUs. Of course a very, very challenging situation is why we are also using surge beds and that is 35 surge beds. That is where we are. What I am saying to everybody is, and it is why we are reducing and we have reduced non-urgent scheduled surgeries. We have reduced non-urgent scheduled surgeries to create hospital capacity. It is why we have taken steps that we don't want to take to move patients from one part of the province to another to create and to support health care workers and capacity. We have the ability to do that of course. What you are suggesting are not things that are needed but I think everybody working in critical care in BC, our exceptional teams who have incredible results, the best results in the world in terms of treating patients with COVID-19 and other things. What they are asking and what we are asking is that people get vaccinated. The reason we need people get vaccinated is that it is in my view and I think Dr. Henry's view, a preventable fact that 88% of people in our critical care units with COVID-19 right now are not fully vaccinated. That is a preventable situation. We have in total less than 2 dozen COVID-19 cases who are either partially or fully vaccinated today. If that were the situation, obviously we across the province and with everyone, we would be all vastly better off. The message here is we are going to continue to manage the health care system to protect it and to support health care staff. We have quite a bit more capacity to do that should we need to take other steps. But the message to everyone is get vaccinated. Next question, we go to Lisa used city news. Hello, Dr. Henry, just following up a bit on what Richard asked, I hope you can give a little bit more clarity about how you know it is safe. We said it is not 100% safe when you will allow full capacity again. What is the limit, especially when Minister Dix is talking about how full the hospitals and ICUs are, how do you know it is not going to backfire? Because people are having a lot of trouble getting the approach. Absolutely. We need to remember that it is the vaccine helps us and it helps us get back to being able to do things in those settings where we can mitigate the risk. But it is not for everybody. For people whose immune systems are not strong, this is not the time to go to a place, even to perhaps a theater right now at full capacity. But we have not been seeing large outbreaks with the measures we have had in place now in those settings where it is controlled, where people are actually checking a vaccine status and where people are wearing masks and staying seated, it is not taking off in the ways we have seen in the past with the exceptions of some of the communities we have seen. Last week, of course, we put in additional precautions in the north because we were seeing it. So these measures don't increase incapacity in events in northern communities right now where we are seeing a lot of transmission. As a matter of fact, we put in some additional restrictions, most of which affect people who are not vaccinated to try and reduce that risk to them and to others. But some of them do affect people who are vaccinated, recognizing when there is a lot of virus around, there is going to be transmission at a certain point, there is still that risk. So it is not 100% but we need to find that balance of being able to do those important things with the best measures that we have in place. So it is making sure that we are checking the vaccine card, that people are protected as best they can, that you are still wearing masks, that we are not gathering together in large groups, you go in and you experience it in the way that is safest for people who are not vaccinated. So it is happening in those areas where we have high vaccination rates, that this will be a measure that is not going to increase risk and that will monitor it over time. Lisa, do you have a follow-up? We are taking this long to get to the injunction phase with Rawley's and now people are going to be allowed to move around but they are supposed to keep their masks on indoors and indoors. If it is taking this long to get to where you are at with Rawley's, how are you going to keep up with the people who are doing half measures across the board? We do here and particularly we hear complaints from communities where immunization rates are lower in the north. We have heard a number of complaints in the north and this progressive approach has been applied in those areas but I will say that we have overwhelming support for people feeling comfortable going into a restaurant, going into the theater, going into a movie theater, knowing that everybody else there is vaccinated to. So I would say to you, be sure to let people know that you support this, support those restaurants that are doing the right thing, making sure that we as a community are saying this is something that we do together and we can do that allow us to have those important things in our life right now. The next question we go to Rob Brown, Dawson Creek mirror. First question is, is there a timeline for when the province is going to be going mandatory vaccinations for children and what does that look like? I actually don't see at this point that mandatory vaccinations will be required for children. I think there is a whole lot of considerations that we put into mandating vaccines and as you we have talked about a number of times, it depends on risk to the individual but also the situation that we are in and risk to others by the protection that we have or don't have. That is why my focus of course has been on making sure that long-term care, people who work in long-term care are protected and they are not going to be affected by COVID-19 so they don't bring things home to their families but also to protect the other workers in that situation and most importantly to protect the elders and seniors we care for. What we see with children, thankfully, is that they don't have the illness for the most part with COVID and so that risk benefit on an individual level is different plus we know that that is really important. It is important for growth and development of children but this is not something that we are considering at this point. We do have provisions for unvaccinated children for example to be excluded if there is a note break for their own protection and those are the measures that we will think about going forward but we are actually quite excited that we will have some way of protecting young people so that they can continue to experience the life that they need during this period in their growth and development. Rob, do you have a follow-up? Absolutely. We have a fair amount of chatter up here of when the days, the passports are no more and people looking to quite frankly outweigh the passport requirement. Is this something that either yourself or the minister ever see going away as far as a British Columbia without vaccination passports or is this as common now as your driver's license and your fishing license? The BC vaccine card program is designed to address those high-risk situations. So indoor settings in settings that are discretionary so it is not about essential services where we can mitigate the risk and allow people to experience those important things in their lives. But there is also alternatives for people. There are alternatives like take-out, like watching on TV, the hockey game, et cetera. So I don't think these are a part of our life forever. But I will say right now with what we are seeing, it's not the time to gain the system. This is not the time to try and pretend and get around it because you don't like the concept of it. It's about making sure that we're doing what we can to keep those people safe from getting sick and from passing it on to others in those higher risk settings. So this is, you know, not I know I've heard a number of people trying to get around these and like all of the things that we're doing, it's not to get around it, it's to make sure that we're doing what we can to support each other to get through this period where we are still seeing a lot of virus. And this virus has changed. So we need to adapt our measures and the things that we're doing to keep each other protected and to make sure that we can get through this fall and winter. And just, Rob, on Dawson Creek, I mean the path forward. I mean the path forward for everyone, the path forward for people in Dawson Creek and everywhere else is a higher rate of immunization. As you know, Dawson Creek right now in this period has suffered and is suffering significantly from COVID-19 from its impact on people in its community on the impact of the, I believe, 13 or 14 people have been flown out of Dawson Creek to be in critical care. Most of them on Vancouver Island flying 900 kilometers. We need to raise those vaccination rates which are 67.2% for those immunization in Dawson Creek. We need to raise those much overwhelmingly. People in the north, in their majority have got the vaccine card. Overwhelmingly, people in the north, we're approaching 80 percent and we expect to hit 80% across the north soon are getting vaccinated. But we need more. We need more people to get vaccinated. You know, people want, I know people want another path, some of them want another path. This is a path. It's free. It's easy. It keeps your family safe. It keeps your grandmother safe and your granddad safe. Get vaccinated. For the next question, we go to Glenn Korström, business in Vancouver. Hello. Yeah, thanks for taking my call. The daily track, statistics track unvaccinated, partially vaccinated and unvaccinated people. I'm wondering, do you track the hospitalizations, deaths and cases by border patrols? I'm wondering, do you track the hospitalizations, deaths and cases by brand of vaccine? Yeah. So there's, as we've talked about a number of times, there's different types of surveillance data and then there's hospital census data. So one of the things that we do with surveillance data is understand exactly who got what vaccine for, at which time and which interval. So we presented a couple of weeks ago and there's some very detailed information on the VCC-DC website. And this is part of the data that the U.S. CDC, for example, used to help them come up with their recommendations about allowing mixed and matched vaccines into the U.S. So we do track vaccine effectiveness, hospitalizations as a measure of severe illness by what combination of vaccines people received and that information is available. What it does show us across the board is that every combination is very effective at preventing severe illness. The AstraZeneca, AstraZeneca is slightly less than every other combination in terms of preventing infection. But if you got AstraZeneca and then an mRNA vaccine, that protection goes back up again. So what we are learning, both here in Canada, with data from Quebec and from BC, being a really important part of that. But also from around the world, is that the interval between dose one and dose two makes a difference in how long and strong your protection is. And that's something that we went to a longer interval early on here in BC. And also the different types of vaccines that you have can stimulate the immune system and the mix and match can, in some cases, provide a stronger protection. But also things that is what I call science in action, that we are learning as we go about how these work. But yes, we do have that information. It's an important part of how we measure things over time and how we know when the effectiveness might wane for people and if and when a booster dose might be needed or a third dose depending on people's immune systems and things. Glen, do you have a follow-up? Yes, I do have a follow-up for the brand of vaccine. But some other data points, the daily stats don't have third doses broken out. It's just first and second doses. And also I'm wondering about the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 related ailments that are not in the regular numbers. You said a couple of weeks ago it was about 140, but I haven't had updates. So that would be the people who have been in hospital for COVID-19 and have gone more than 10 days. Yes, so it's, and I did say that we were going to be providing that number as it turns out, not surprisingly perhaps. It's more complicated than I initially thought. So I've been working with our team and we will be trying to provide a semblance of that. So what we do measure, we measure the number of people who are in hospital with COVID-19 and what we want to understand is how many people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 up at some point in their illness in hospital. And we only want to count them once so that we know what percentage of people have severe illness or hospitalization. We also want to know how many people end up in critical care. On the other hand, we also are following how many people are in hospital with COVID-19 and how many people are in hospital with COVID-19. So we are looking at the capacity and the minister presents those data on an ongoing basis. And some of the people in our hospital senses are people who have had COVID and are no longer having an acute illness. So it's not an automatic at 10 days. It depends on the person's illness goes, even though you may not be infectious anymore. So what I am learning is that marker that we have put in to help the hospitals manage staffing in different units, so the information is collected not for us to understand how many people are recovering in hospital, but for hospitals to manage operations. So which is all to say, I'm trying to get a better sense of how many people are recovering from the initial look at it, somewhere around 200, we think, but that includes a variety of things. It includes people who are over their acute illness and are recovering in hospital, and we are looking at how many those are. At least a third of the people that we are talking about are people who were in hospital discharged more than a month from other illnesses or for other reasons that may not have anything to do with COVID. So we are trying to sort that out. Some of it are people, as you mentioned, that are in hospital get COVID while they are in hospital and still in hospital. And some of them are people who have recovered from their acute illness but can't go back to living at home, so they may be awaiting placement, for example. It is a reflection of the fact that we don't have a simple single IT system that allows us to look at this in an easy way. And so much of this information is collected one-on-one by a designated staff person, usually a nurse, over time. What I do can tell you is the ICU numbers, the critical care numbers are collected by an individual in those critical care units, and there is a smaller number of those. Those have been steady over time and more consistent. And I will be coming hopefully within the next day or two with a better breakdown of what we are talking about in that other group of discontinued isolation. I will also say that one of the complicating factors that we have had is when the case is dramatically increased in interior health this summer, there was a period of time when some of that was missed. So we are looking at what that means and we will be correcting that number. All of those people are counted in our cases of people who have had COVID, but there are some people who the hospitalizations have been missed. And we are working on what that means and how many of those that there is over time. Thank you. Yes, on your first question, Glen, we will be breaking down starting tomorrow, the day by day of the COVID-19 dose. It is roughly 60,000 across the province. There are three categories of people currently eligible from quite a bit further back. The first 15,000 who are extremely immunocompromised and that group of people is well under their way to have received their doses. They were invited to book appointments to get appointments in the middle of September. The second group of people in long-term care and assisted living this week and next week to meeting that test for residents of long-term care and assisted living. The third group are about 110,000 people who are not as immunocompromised as the first group, but significantly immunocompromised. They have been invited people such as cancer patients, for example, and they have been invited to book as well. Of those categories, about 60,000 have been done and we will start reporting on third doses tomorrow as we have first and second doses through the time. I would say in the past seven days, there have been more third dose immunizations than first dose, as you would expect, given that we are now at 89.2% of first dose immunization, but we are obviously pushing people to get first doses to complete their course with the second dose and we are eligible and required based on being immunocompromised or the first dose. And our final question today goes to Bellpuree, CBC. Hello, and a reminder, please, we need our answers both in English and French. The vaccination rates among indigenous youth are low compared to their elders and non-indigenous youth across AC and it's a voice, the need for better vaccine campaigning to address this issue among indigenous youth. How will the government work to improve vaccine messaging and outreach to urban indigenous youth? That's a really good question and something we have been working on a lot. Dr. Daniel Bainsmith in my office and particularly Dr. Shannon McDonald with the First Nations Health Authority. As you know, we have been linking data for the First Nations and other indigenous people from the very beginning of this. And that information is housed and used by the First Nations Health Authority and these are some of the things we are seeing. We saw a really strong uptake early on. We prioritized a number of First Nations communities and we took an all of community approach, which means all of the adults and in those communities at the time, of course, it was only 18 and are 17 and above who are eligible. So we saw a real strong impact on the health of the community and it's leveled off. It's also a challenge because the proportion of younger people in those communities is higher than in many other communities. So there's still a proportion, a higher proportion of younger children who are not yet eligible. And it's been a challenge getting vaccine for the 12 to 17. A couple of the issues have been much of the early years, or near urban centers as well as remote communities was with Moderna because it was more flexible from a logistics point of view and didn't need the same level of freezer stable time. But, of course, the Moderna wasn't approved for use for younger children for considerably later than Pfizer. So going in with when the whole community got Moderna and offering Pfizer to younger children was the first time for the first time. The teenagers was a challenge in some communities. And, of course, there's been some pushback in some communities about people being concerned about the effects of the vaccine. And we've been meeting with First Nations leaders to try and get ideas about how we can do this better, how we can make it safer for young Indigenous people to get the vaccines and to get them as quickly as we can. So these are not easy questions to answer. We are certainly looking at it and especially now we've started to see increased rates in First Nations communities. We have increased, about seven times increased now compared to non-First Nations communities in some areas. So it is an important question. And some of the specifics we're doing, I point you to the First Nations Health Authority website, there's some great information, but it really is about trying to tackle it on an individual community-by-community basis, having those trusted leaders, answering questions for people. And I've had the people spending many hours over the last few weeks with leaders across the province to try and come up with some strategies for that. I think, Bell, you know, certainly from the 12th to 17th population in the north, for example, we have around 50% of two-dose vaccination in the 12th to 17th category. And within that category, you see the same kind of regional variations in the north, in Indigenous communities in the northwest as opposed to the northeast, that you see in the overall population. So we're working both locally and with First Nations leaders everywhere to raise those rates because that's extremely important. Early on in the pandemic, we gave priority to Indigenous communities and we got to a certain level for a long time those communities were the most vaccinated communities for those reasons. But obviously now, we are now many months since it was offered and COVID-19 vaccine has essentially been offered to everyone in that situation while their regional differences isn't borne out. And that's why we're making the First Nations health authority, ourselves, are making significant efforts to try and expand that and to raise those rates now. And I think that the communities of the First Nations here, there is a wide variety of vaccination levels. We work hard, but it's true that among the young people, especially in certain regions, the level of vaccination is much less high than yesterday. So in general, in the north, for example, only 5% of the population is vaccinated. And that's why we're making the First Nations health authority. We're making the First Nations only 50% of the population is vaccinated now, from 12 to 17. And the situation among the people of the First Nations in the region is the same. And the regional realities also, between the northwest and the northwest, are equivalent to the general population. So we see that in the level of vaccination. So it's very important that we have a very important community. If in an isolated community, for example, the risk, the risk now has never seen COVID-19 and can see it in a massive way at any time. So it's necessary to be vaccinated. In the urban region, we see a little bit of the same thing, we work hard with the organizations, with the First Nations health authority, to raise this campaign, to increase the numbers, but certainly to ensure that the people of the First Nations are protected from COVID-19. Bell, do you have a follow-up? Yes, please. How many children aged 5 to 11 in British Columbia have already been registered to be vaccinated? We're wondering if you can elaborate on how you plan for COVID-19. How you plan to roll out the vaccination program for children. Will the vaccine be available at the same time across the province or perhaps certain communities targeted first? Looking for an update on also where children will access the vaccine. I can give you the general's, I know the minister has the numbers on the number of people who have been registered so far. We have about 340,000 children in the 5 to 11 age group. We know from polls that have been done, I know there was one that just came out yesterday that shows about half of parents, a little more than half of parents want to have their children protected as soon as possible. So that's good news and I know it's something we've been waiting for to make sure that we can support young people. And how we're going to do that will vary. It will vary by community. We expect that we will have enough vaccine to have it available everywhere in the province at the same time. But it will be different strategies depending on the community. We're talking, for example, in some of the more remote communities, we may do it at the same time. Those for certain people in that population. So these things will vary depending on what, you know, we would like to access. I will say that it will mostly be done by the immunizers that are experiencing and providing vaccine to children in clinics. And so very specific family-oriented clinics in many communities, for example. It will not be largely through pharmacies or family physicians offices to start with because we need to continue to ensure that every dose gets entered into our IT system. And so we're looking at ways to facilitate that. We need to have every dose in our immunization registry. That, you know, the 8 million plus doses that we've had, it's what allows us to show the effectiveness and the safety of vaccines. Knowing exactly which lot number of which dose has gone into each individual's arms. And we talked earlier about how do we know vaccine effectiveness and how do we know effectiveness by different brands of the vaccine. And that's because it is so important when we have new products like these that we measure that so fastidiously. So our IMBC program has that ability. And we are onboarding pharmacies to be able to provide that. But we also hear from parents that they want to be with their child. They want to be able to be in an environment where they can't be with their children. So we are working those details out which sounds there is, it's hard to describe because there is going to be different ways of approaching it depending on the needs in different communities. We will get the number of registrants. I had it a few days ago but it's been going up obviously because now we have a situation where Pfizer of course is seeking approval to move forward. And start immunizing children soon. So I think the numbers on the move, one of the interesting things about and we are learning the lessons from 12 to 17 vaccinations which are going very well. Over 80% province-wide but 12 to 17 still lags other categories. And if you look at the specific numbers within that, we understand that 17-year-olds and 16- year-olds and 15- year-olds and 13- year-olds and 17-year-olds and 18- to 24 being over 90% in terms of immunization and each time you drop an age year, we have a lower level of immunization. So we are learning the lessons. We are going to talk to people in terms of how we are the most effective because as Dr. Henry said, that's 340,000 children eligible approximately for the vaccine and we want them to be able to get it and to meet the particular problems of getting a vaccine and getting a needle when you are a child. And all of those are real and we are going to work our way through that. So it will look a little different. We are going to look at the situation and see how we can do it best. I would say that there are children who are 5 to 11 who will be able to receive a vaccine of COVID-19 and that's important and essential. So we are working hard today to record the children. There are a lot of opportunities. We have not lost your place in waiting. There are a lot of opportunities to be registered and to receive the vaccine. We are going to work hard to be able to get the vaccine. We are also going to learn lessons from what we have seen during our 12- to 17-year vaccine efforts. We are going to work hard with parents and others to ensure the success of this campaign. But of course, we are happy with this opportunity. We are going to work hard with parents and others to ensure that it is a success too. Thank you very much.