 Good afternoon, my name is Adrian Dix, I'm B.C.'s Minister of Health and my right is Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.'s Provincial Health Officer. This is our COVID-19 briefing for Tuesday November the 30th for British Columbia. Honored to be here on the territories of the Musqueam of the Squamish of the Slava Tooth First Nations. Honored to be here on their lands today and with that it's my honor to introduce Dr. Bonnie Henry. Thank you very much and good afternoon. Today of course I want to share our latest updates on our COVID-19 public health response and our vaccine program. As I'm sure everybody is aware in the last few days there have been many questions about the most recent variant of concern, the Omicron variant that was detected first in South Africa and has now been detected in many countries around the world and as you know we have been looking here in B.C. as well and today we have identified our first case in B.C. and a person in the Fraser Health Authority who recently traveled and returned from Nigeria. They are isolating and public health is as we do with every case following up with them and their contacts at this time. To date the Public Health Agency of Canada who we've been working closely with since late last week when this was first identified has identified 204 people in B.C. who were recently in affected areas and the quarantine service working with our teams have connected with all of these individuals over the past few days and they have been sent for PCR testing and are in isolation. We have a robust program here in B.C. and have had from the very beginning using whole genome sequencing to help us understand what strains are transmitting to whom. We have been using them for helping us identify transmission in outbreaks and as you know over the last number of months we have done a very comprehensive program. We did 100% of all of our cases for a period of time and as those cases increased we targeted our program to make sure that we did whole genome sequencing on 100% of cases for one week a month and then a proportion for every other week plus from the beginning we have been doing a whole genome sequencing on any positive COVID test from anybody who's traveled internationally and that is how we detected our first case today. We are going to be continuing doing whole genome sequencing on 100% of our clinical samples as we have been doing and I will say as well that we did especially when this new variant became known we did look back at all of the whole genome sequences that we have and this process helps us understand how the virus has evolved and we can be confident that we're not seeing widespread transmission of this variant in B.C. yet. We know that these concerning mutations can arise and where vaccination is low in parts of the world they can spread rapidly. It reminds us as well that this new variant of concern reminds us that we are in a global storm and that it is not equal everywhere around the world and equal access to vaccination is something that's going to be important for us to get through this. So there is still a lot we do not yet know about the Omicron variant and it will take some weeks for us to get sufficient data to understand and this will entail careful surveillance which is one of the things that we're doing in Canada and here in B.C. and enhanced whole genome sequencing as I mentioned and epidemiologic studies to help us understand who is being infected whether it's causing more severe disease. These are the things the data that we need to understand if this virus is going to be the strain of the virus is going to be more transmittable than the ones that we've seen so far. There are some suggestions that it might be but whether it will out compete the Delta variants that we've seen so far here in B.C. is yet to be known. So that's of course the AY 25 27 and a smattering of the 4.2 whether it causes more severe illness is something that is also still unknown and whether vaccines are less effective or people are more likely to be reinfected after being infected with a Delta strain for example. These are the questions that we will be working with colleagues across the country and around the world to help answer for everyone. In the meantime the government of Canada acted quickly to put in restrictions on travel to try and slow down the introduction. As we have seen with every single variant that has arisen we cannot stop this virus from transmitting but what we can try and do is slow it down to help us understand exactly where the virus is now where this variant of concern is and that's one of the things we've been doing I call it case finding right now to have an understanding of where it is but it also means that we need to take cautious and prudent action as we go through this next few weeks. Here in B.C. we are fortunate that we already have many protective measures in place but we must anticipate and plan for the worst even as we hope that this strain will not cause the havoc that we've seen with some others. Tried and true public health measures work. We have seen this repeatedly over the last two years. We know that and we know that they work against all the variants. First and foremost is vaccination and yes while vaccination doesn't prevent 100% of infections we have seen how important it is and protecting people from more severe illness particularly with the delta variant. We've seen the strain on our healthcare system when we've had even small outbreaks in groups of people who don't have that protection for vaccination and we are thankful that we have vaccination to help us weather the strain from the delta but we also know that masking especially when we're in indoor crowded spaces physical distancing limiting our gathering sizes especially when they're indoors and good ventilation are things that make a difference in helping prevent the spread of this virus those things are the same and in the excitement of the holiday season that's coming up and with our ability to enjoy so many activities that we have here in BC that have been restricted for many months let's not forget that we are not yet over this pandemic we live in a global community and we are all affected by what happens elsewhere just as others are affected by what happens here so these border restrictions that we have in place and I know there's some new measures being announced today but until everybody in the global community has the ability to be vaccinated and has the same protections we do we are all still at risk as I said the best thing we can do is to protect ourselves and our loved ones and our communities by getting the protection that vaccines offer and we now have that added protection that as of yesterday here in BC children 5 to 11 years of age are also able to be protected with the pediatric vaccines we want to ensure that we wanted to ensure that every parent had access and as you can imagine here in BC in particular it takes some days for the shipments to come from Ontario to us and then for us to be able to distribute them and I just want to give thanks and kudos to our teams across the province there have been extreme measures to try and overcome some of the geographic barriers that we have had because of floods because of roads being disrupted because of supply chains being disrupted and it has been a herculean effort literally when that some of our vaccines were actually flown by hercules and thanks to our our partners to help us get those places across the province I had the wonderful opportunity to be at an immunization clinic yesterday in victoria and there was excitement in the room and relief relief on the faces of parents and a little bit of anxiety and relief on the faces of children once their vaccines were gone and to all of those children who got their vaccines yesterday and today and we'll be getting them in the weeks ahead I just want to say you are all brave and vaccine heroes and parents now's the time to learn more about the pediatric vaccines and to get your children registered and yes you will get an invite and they will be eligible in the next little while I do want to remind parents and everybody that pharmacies are coming online to help with particularly with the booster doses and right now they only have the vaccines that are for children 12 and older so you cannot get the the pediatric vaccines out of the pharmacies at this point and soon though we will have more pharmacies online across the province to support our booster campaign I also want to put a call out to the many recently retired doctors and nurses and other health care providers and other immunizers who stepped up when this vaccination campaign started about a year ago we need you back now we can use you in our clinics across the province we've been stretched as you know in our health care system and we could really use the support of immunizers so I encourage you if you have some time to connect again with your with the health authorities and to come back and be part of our wonderful vaccine program again given the heightened concern with this omicron variant of concern I would like to remind everyone about the importance of using all of our layers of protection as we head into winter and into the high days and holidays ahead this includes washing your hands regularly keeping our groups small choosing outside instead of inside and staying home and away from others if you're sick having vaccinated people only particularly if it's an inside gathering or if you have elders or seniors or people whose immune systems are compromised we need to protect them through this highest risk transmission season I also want to clarify the Provincial Health Order on masks it requires everyone five years of age and older to wear a mask in all indoor public spaces this will become more and more important and we've seen that around the world as people are dealing with this new increased potentially increased transmissible variant it's an important measure that we all need to adhere to here in BC and as we enter this holiday and winter season I am amending the mask order to include a requirement that participants attending worship services including choirs must wear a face covering a mask during services these masks can be removed for eating or drinking to allow for ceremony activities and readers and celebrants can remove them if distancing is in place during the celebration of the ceremony as well I'm adding to our events and gathering orders a requirement that worship services must be limited to 50 percent of seated capacity unless all of the participants are vaccinated in which case full capacity or 100 percent can be used the province as you know has a proof of vaccine card available for faith services to use but will allow flexibility for you and your congregations to work with congregants to provide proof of vaccination by other means and I know that many faith services have done this already and many faith leaders are working with their own communities to make sure that we have these measures in place to protect people over this period of time as well I want to update people on the additional restrictions that have been in place in interior health and with the decrease in transmission and the leveling off of our hospitalizations and the strains in communities the additional measures in place in interior health will be repealed as of tonight and the the current restrictions that are in place both the mask mandates and the gathering and events orders that are in the rest of the province will apply to all of interior health so that means that you can have 100 percent capacity when the vaccine card is being used for example in addition the northern health restrictions the chief medical health officer in the north has reviewed the restrictions that are in place there and has and we've been in a transition period as I've mentioned over the last week and a bit to try and ensure that we are having restrictions that are commensurate with the risk in those areas as well as the strain on the health care system and so northern health will be revising their orders one to have an expiry date of January 31st of 2022 the order will cover all of northern health authority it will include that bars and night clubs remain closed restaurants must continue to end their liquor servers at 10 p.m given the situation in the north there is still no in-person worship services being allowed at this time although drive-in services will be permitted social gatherings at private residences will be for up to 10 people inside or 25 people outside if people are fully vaccinated outdoor events with more than 25 people will have a 50 capacity with use of the bc vaccine card and indoor seated events with greater than 10 people will have a 50 capacity limit and that includes funerals weddings sporting events theater arts and performance events and I know some of these were restricted to a much lower number in the past so this these changes will come into effect starting tomorrow as well with the use of the bc vaccine card in addition the restrictions that are in place in the Fraser east region will remain the same we know there are many things that people are dealing with in Fraser east right now so this is a lot for us to think about today I think we are reminded that we're not out of the the woods yet with this pandemic and we are in a most difficult and challenging time and people in British Columbia across our province have been tested repeatedly not only by the pandemic but also by nature as we continue to see today with the ongoing rain and flooding risks the days are darker and colder and shorter and we're spending more time indoors where this virus continues to spread more easily at the same time our risks remain high globally as we see transmission in countries that don't have access to vaccination where variants of concern like Delta and now Omicron emerge despite this we see every day the strength and resiliency of our communities across bc and we persevere and there are rays of hope we know now that being able to protect our younger children is a is a really positive thing for families across the province and we've seen the support and heroism from our neighbours from our first responders and from our healthcare workers and you have my gratitude we also know the more people who are immunized no matter what age the safer we all are and it's one less thing for us to worry about as we get through this challenging time together we will get through this storm there's many storms together and we need to do that by continuing to have that compassion and kindness for each other and doing all of the things that we know will keep us safe thank you thank you very much Dr Henry and I wanted to start by saying that we'll be providing a number of updates some of them shorter than usual today because there is of course a significant number of questions that may come from what I'm saying what Dr Henry's saying so we want to give you some time for that I do want to say that a year ago the independent review of bc healthcare led by Dr Mary Ellen Terpal Lafon was released in plain sight addressing indigenous specific racism in bc bc healthcare confirmed widespread indigenous specific racism stereotyping and discrimination within the healthcare system in bc we will be responding to this in more detail later today including efforts to address the recommendations in her report and to create a culturally safe healthcare system for all including where we're making progress and where there's more work to do I understand Mary Ellen Terpal Lafon releasing her own response as well and that should come at approximately three o'clock I can also report to you today on the vaccination rates within the bc public service as you know vaccination is a term of employment employment within the public service at this time adding another layer layer of protection for government workers and the people they serve the vast majority of public servants like the vast majority of British Columbians are fully vaccinated as of today more than 98 percent of bc public service employees are partially fully vaccinated and 97 percent are fully vaccinated a small number of people will have legitimate reasons why they do not get vaccinated based on a medical or other condition and we have received a small number of accommodation requests is 0.72 percent of the workforce those are being reviewed on a case-by-case basis I want to thank the members of the public service who have been vaccinated in such massive numbers for all they're doing for to protect themselves their co-workers and the people around them from COVID-19 also want to note with respect to vaccination that we're at 4,212,517 first doses 4,056,228 second doses 419,163 third or booster dose I just want to put that in context people often think back six months ago or think back to when they got their first dose about six months ago about at the end of May we saw we saw approximately 200,000 second doses so the work on third and booster doses is significant and positive further I know that there's interest in in in registrations and booking of children 5 to 11 114,106 children 5 to 11 have been registered in bc for their vaccination and as of 11 o'clock today 41,697 have booked their appointments so I appreciate the progress has been made and certainly ready to answer questions on that subject next I just want to note that the federal government made an announcement at one o'clock which all of you will I think be interested in they announced they're adding Nigeria Egypt and Malawi to the list of countries involved in the temporary travel ban to the list that was announced last Friday and also the federal government announced that they'll be requiring all their arrivals except from the United States to have a rival test and self-isolate while waiting for results we understand the federal government will be providing to kids two individual travelers on arrival and have or are contracting the number of providers to provide the tests and deliver the results to individuals and obviously we're assuming that the protocols will be in place and expect they will to keep provincial public health informed of any positive results we'll be meeting with the federal government indeed there's a meeting at 2 30 at the end of this press conference to both to discuss the details and the challenges of implementing this measure but I want to say this we're supportive of the federal government taking precautionary steps until we better understand the potential risks of the variant as Dr Henry has said in the coming weeks and we'll work with them diligently as we have from the beginning of the pandemic as they roll out these new measures I want to note one of the key elements of what BC has done that is I think distinctive and important is the investment that we've made in contact tracing and note that there are total 1661 contact tracers in BC we were working on contract tracing as of November 26th 2021 also a very challenging time for our health care system I just want to note if you have to date on on capacity and the number of people using our health care system just to to say that we have as you know 9229 base beds in BC we have a 2353 surge beds in our province and as of today we have just over I think it's 9302 people who are in patients in BC hospitals in critical care we have 510 base critical care beds 218 surge critical care beds and the number of those in critical care in total is 489 and as noted and for people in the north this will continue to be of interest 144 critical care patients have been air transferred out of northern health 113 of those confirmed to have COVID-19 and finally with respect to surgeries you'll note that from November note that from November 21st November 27th health authorities postponed 230 non-urgent scheduled surgeries at 16 in Fraser health 17 in northern health 4 in Vancouver coastal health 25 in Vancouver Island health and 168 in interior health no surgeries were postponed in the provincial health services authority cumulatively from September 5th to November 27th there have been 3451 surgical postponements but I want to say a enormous amount of surgery is also taking place in the province certainly parallel to what's happened in previous years and pre-pandemic times in the path in the week in the most recent week for which we have statistics October 31st to November 6th 6,918 surgeries were completed in BC and obviously all of this brings great relief to those needing surgery and to their families and reflects the extraordinary work that it continues to take place across our system I think surgical renewal obviously means the most to those in need of surgeries and to the family and friends and families who love and support them but I believe it's also a statement of resilience by our extraordinary health care teams around the province by communities what we need to continue to do in our health care system while dealing with the challenges of two public health emergencies and other extraordinary challenges that we're dealing with such as the implementation of the in-plane site report no matter the moment being faced in our BC pandemic those who deliver surgeries to those who need them show us achievement that adds to our appreciation of welcome moments and lessens the weight of those that challenges it simply does it is I think an example in which we can all find strength in our own resilience no matter what moments we're facing in our BC pandemic with that thank you very much and we're happy to take your questions thank you for joining us today as a reminder to the reporters on the phone please press star one to enter the queue you are limited to one question and one follow-up please also remember to take your phone off mute as you are not audible until your name is called our first question is from bender so john ctv actually bender so Jen um just wanted to ask uh with three more countries added to the federal list of banned flights um just if you have an idea of how many more people might be in BC and need to be tested or isolated and just can you give us a sense of Dr Henry like how likely is it that we will have more cases with this variant and how concerned the public should be yeah um you know I think this is the level of concern is at watchful um level it is something that we are paying attention to we're doing additional enhanced surveillance so I mentioned uh we do a whole genome sequencing of any positive international traveler and that's how we identified the person who was uh uh positive today um and that's uh there was a there's a program as well nationally to do random testing of vaccinated travelers and that's how the people were identified in Ontario and in both these cases these are people who are traveling to a country that was not initially identified as as having transmission so these are all things that we're learning over time we don't yet know how many additional people were will be returning travelers to BC from the additional three countries so Egypt Malawi and Nigeria um but we have also been looking at all of the travel related cases that we have and that's so we we have not seen a lot of it I can be we can be confident with the rapid genome whole genome sequencing that we've been doing um that we're it's not widespread in BC right now uh what we are seeing is 99.6 I think it is present of our cases are the uh AY the delta strains that are AY 25 27 and and a smattering of 4.2 so we have gone back and looked at that but having said that we will continue to watch um so it is inevitable I believe that we will see more cases but what we're not seeing is widespread transmission right now and that's where the uncertainty lies is this does this strain have a competitive advantage that means it will take over the strains that are circulating now um as delta did from alpha and beta and you remember earlier on for us we had we had the alpha and gamma that were competing with each other and then eventually both of them were overtaken by uh by delta so those are the things that we'll be watching really carefully over the next few weeks. Pinder do you have a follow-up? Um yes I do I have one for a colleague so nearly 12 percent of people in British Columbia uh who died from COVID likely contracted the virus in hospital according to ministry of health statistics a cute care outbreak continue to fight your guidelines on how to prevent them why are there so many and what more will you do to prevent them especially in this phase of the pandemic with omicron? Yeah well I think it's very clear that acute care outbreaks can spread quite rapidly and part of that is patients who are coming in from the community who have undetected disease and then it's detected after it's spread within the hospital system and just today the hospital outbreak at Abbotsford was declared over thankfully and so we've been doing a number of things I think if we look at the number of people who have what we call nosocomial or hospital acquired COVID infection it's a very small percentage of the overall number of people that have had COVID and it's heavily weighted to earlier on when we had didn't have this as robust screening and we didn't have the vaccination so we have continued to have smaller much more contained outbreaks in the last in the last few months and the couple of things that have made a huge difference one is the fact that all health care workers now are vaccinated and that means the protection that they have and the protection that they have from patients who may be bringing COVID in with them and the very high vaccination rates that we're seeing in our communities and also more recently we've seen the effect of the booster doses the people who are getting breakthrough hospitalization we're generally older people with more compromised immune systems so this booster dose has made a difference in that as well so that is not the only thing the other important things of course are paying attention to personal protective equipment that's why we do require people to wear masks at all times in the hospital both health care workers and visitors the fact that visitors need to be vaccinated to come into our hospitals because we recognize how challenging it can be particularly in some of the words as well as there's been a lot of attention paid to appropriate infection prevention and control precautions including ventilation in some of the particular some of the older facilities so it is a combination of infection and prevention and control measures on the increased vaccination on the health care worker vaccination policy and the and the vaccination that everybody is getting in the community just one one short thing to add bender we have today as of today for acute care outbreaks in bc i think maybe three after Abbotsford two long-term care outbreaks active in bc and one in assisted living two long-term care ones are at George Derby at Peace Villa and then one at Laurier and Prince George and you see the effect of mandatory vaccination here compared to where we were before in the end of October we had approximately 20 long-term care outbreaks six acute care outbreaks three assisted living outbreaks so the impact of the measures that have been taken both mandatory vaccination booster doses and the efforts that have been made with respect to visitors have had a real effect in long-term care of course just about all of the residents are vaccinated the vast majority now three times staff have all been vaccinated 100% and visitors are all vaccinated it's slightly different in acute care because of course a disproportionate number of new patients related to COVID-19 are coming into the hospital and vaccinate to get the care that they need but that said the steps are are effective and what we're seeing is especially in long-term care and nobody I can tell you is more grateful for this than me but then anybody who knows anybody in long-term care to see that we're down to again to a small number of long-term care outbreaks and obviously continues to be a concern of George Derby and Peace Villa but you can see the progress has been made in part related to these measures. Our next question is from Richard Zessman Global News. Dr Henry the federal government is part of their announcements they made today says they've asked NASTI to look at new guidance around boosters what could this mean for British Columbia in terms of our booster program do you think that there should be changes made to boosters considering the new variant and you know what's your guidance as we head to the holiday season you know should families download the bc vaccine app and require their guests to show proof of immunization before showing up for a holiday gathering. That's a that's a toughie remind me about that one okay so the first part around the national advisory committee on immunization we at the council of chief medical officers of health have been meeting with them regularly and they came out with recommendations and they've been doing it in in pieces so they've been looking at high first they looked at people who are immune compromised and whether they needed a third dose to give them adequate protection from the primary series and then they looked at who was most at risk and needed booster doses to start with so what they have been looking at over the past number of weeks and what we expect to have discussions with them later on this week is the general population so people who are immune competent and younger and not necessarily at higher risk as you know here in bc we have already made a decision around everybody 18 years of age actually 12 years of age and older although booster doses aren't yet approved by health canada for younger ages but anyway we've also already made our a plan for our booster dose approach which essentially focuses right now on those at highest risk so health care workers as well as people over the age of 70 where we're trying to focus on making sure they get them because we started early with that group of people we know that they're the ones having the most breakthrough as well as they often had the shorter interval so we'll get some more details from nasi later this week but i believe that are that they're likely to you know we'll look at them for advice around intervals and whether there is any need to change an interval right now we're looking at six months for most people and the vaccine effectiveness data that we have from bc from kebek really supports that so i don't think it'll change but everything is new you know we are looking at the information that's coming around omicron and as i mentioned it really is a bit too early to say but within the next couple of weeks we'll have more information on that and i know i've been watching uh the uk has made a decision to move up booster doses for younger people so it will be a discussion that we'll be having in the coming days and more information by next week on that in terms of whether you should use the bc vaccine card it is something that is there to help you um and i think many of us trust our family especially for having people over and i know many people have recounted to me it is challenging sometimes when you have family or friends who may or may not be vaccinated and you might not know so what i encourage everybody to do is to have those conversations it is important for people especially at this time of the year to continue to take these precautions to protect those who are most at risk so if we're having family gatherings and we have people in our family who are elder who are seniors who have immune compromising conditions or we're concerned about catching this virus we know it is here with us it's going to be here with us for a long time and vaccination is our best protection for those who are most vulnerable so i think it is important for us to kindly have those conversations and for people who have chosen not to be vaccinated at this point i encourage you to rethink that decision and to have those conversations about not putting others at risk if you do make that choice over this coming risky period Richard do you have a follow-up i do the world health organization has come out with some guidance around travel restrictions ultimately saying that these sort of blanket travel bans don't really work they're also suggesting anyone over the age of 60 or with the mu no issue should not be traveling internationally right now is this the sort of guidance you would give to British columbians around travel considering the variant yeah you know this is a toughy and i think this variant in particular we had been moving towards a relatively good place but it reminds us that any time that the virus can change and mutate and transmit between large numbers of people or animals in some cases that it can mutate and change very rapidly and just by chance at some point you're going to end up with a combination of mutations that can make it a variant of concern and we know that vaccination is highly effective but right now the access to vaccination and therefore the rates of transmission of this virus in different countries around the world is different and yes we're seeing rapid rise in cases in some countries in Europe we're seeing it in parts of Africa South Africa right now we're seeing it in Southeast Asia so i think we need to understand this virus is everywhere and if you're not we're all likely to be exposed to it more likely if you're traveling to a country where transmission is going up and if you're not protected through vaccination and your older or your immune system is not working as well and you may not get as much protection from vaccination you need to understand your own personal risks when you're traveling so i do think it's a reminder to us that things can change very rapidly during this pandemic and people have been stranded we know there's health care workers who've been stranded there's our national field hockey team is is stranded down in South Africa so these are all the the trials and tribulations of travel right now uh internationally so that is a personal risk that people need to to take or make but i think the advice about your own personal health risk is an important one to consider as well our next question is from Lisa Cordasco Vancouver Sun hello good afternoon um given the omicron variant will you apply the precautionary principle at the whistler blackcomb scale to order proof of vaccine in order to ride the gondolas as you know many have been urging and if not why not you know i as with many specific things in specific businesses i think that's not my role and my role is to provide uh different businesses and how to do their business safely and i would encourage people who ski at whistler to make their views known to veil who makes those decisions i will remind people that you need to be vaccinated to travel you need to be vaccinated to go into any of the restaurants the vc vaccine card applies in many of those places the the masking mandate applies and that is enforceable at places like ski hills as well Lisa do you have a follow-up yes thank you for that Dr Henry um for a colleague wondering how likely is it that we will see crowd restrictions at sporting events and large games uh if the new variant is more transmissible yeah so those are the things that we need to balance um amongst the the other measures that we're taking to mitigate risk so we know now to go to uh events indoor events anywhere in the province um you need to show proof of vaccination and right now that means you need to be have fully vaccinated and so that is one of the important ways we mitigate risk the other important thing of course is the other things that i've been talking about all along you know if you have gone to a country where uh there's increased transmission if you've been exposed to somebody if you're feeling unwell yourself you need to stay away from these places and we need to make sure um that we take all of those precautions that keep us from passing this on to others as well but right now um i believe that with the masking mandate that we have in place uh with the bc vaccine card and with the high rates of immunization that we have excuse me the measures that we have in place with the gathering and events order should be sufficient to get us through this winter and this holiday season excuse me i will say that that is one of the reasons why i've added on the the faith-based gatherings um just knowing that risk is increasing as we're gathering indoors that we tend to go to more faith-based gatherings over the these holiday seasons and making sure that we are doing um additional things to make sure we're protected in those situations as well our next question is from lisa yosda city news hi thanks lisa yosda uh dr henry when you're talking about people making these decisions about whether they're to travel or not like i just i it feels like we're back at march 2020 and a lot of people do have plans to go different places over the holidays like when will people really know it's time to like make that tough decision you know i encourage people right now to think about this we're in a time where we are seeing this virus transmit in many countries around the world they are taking additional measures sometimes very quickly we look at france we look at germany um austria um singapore japan so you you need to really um take a take a step back and realize that we are not through this yet we're not through this pandemic and the situation is changing very rapidly and it may be that this virus the omicron strain will turn out to be one that doesn't outcompete delta but delta is bad enough right now and it is causing strain on health care systems in many countries around the world it caused strain on our health care system here so these are the times when my recommendation is to to think about staying close staying close to home staying close to your family having your gatherings small um having said that i know that there are many important reasons why people may need to travel whether it's to spend time with loved ones whether there's essential travel that people have to do so those are all of the things that we all need to balance right now i think if you're vaccinated and fully vaccinated um it puts the risk in a different perspective but you need to understand that in the countries you are going to there may still be rapid implementation of restrictions there are testing requirements that are going to be changing i know in many countries in Europe there's still a lot of testing that's required and that is also a financial cost so these are the that's the situation we're in right now here in bc we've also been through an awful lot in these last few months so i know sometimes that means people need to be with family but i would encourage you to keep it small and keep it close to home Lisa do you have a follow-up i sure do with the new border restrictions that the federal government has brought in it's very noticeable that they're not requiring testing for people flying into the u.s so it seems pretty easy for someone to fly there and fly in isn't that just a massive hole in um the protection or how do you work around that would you like to see testing for people who are coming into the u.s as well do you think that's coming yeah um i suspect i don't know the details as the minister indicated we were uh we've we have a meeting following this to understand more uh about what the intent is but i will also say that we are still requiring pre-arrival testing so uh that is still in place even from the u.s with the exception of people um driving across the border for very short uh intervals so i think that's important and we know that the pre-arrival testing from the u.s is very reliable and that's one of the reasons perhaps while why the u.s was not considered and also that we have um a lot of travel across these uh these borders um so i know that this will be under some discussion in the next little while and i i don't have all the details right now our next question is from moira whiton taihi hi there thank you um moira whiton from the taihi my question for dr henry you know we saw the delta variant really thrive uh third wave um and the fourth in in the fall what is being done to make sure bc doesn't repeat the other variant driven waves we've seen and you know should british columbians be kind of mentally or or physically preparing um to see a fifth a fifth wave and a fifth peak in the province with this new variant you know i think there's a there's a couple of things that i tried to outline here but the number one most important one that protects us all that protects our healthcare system that keeps us from getting really sick is vaccination and the fact that we have very high rates of immunization compared to what we had even a few months ago the fact that we now have protection for younger children is really really important i can't overstate how much that provides us protection particularly from the severe illness that leads people to to need hospital care or icu care and all of the impacts that that has had on our healthcare system and that we're seeing in other places that is still our number one best tool to get us through this so the booster dose program that we have the vaccine mandates that we have the and taking that with the other moderate pursuit uh what am i trying to say restrictions that we have in place with our pho orders so not forgetting that the public health measures that we know work will work against this variant too so that means wearing our masks it means cleaning our hands it means keeping our distance especially not crabbing crowded indoor spaces with many other people do you have a follow-up i do thank you um late in uh in last summer on the government of ontario's science advisory committee said that uh are estimated that up to 90% of unvaccinated people in ontario could be infected with covid by the end of the following year if kind of current restrictions and transmission levels stayed the same does bc have any estimation or modeling around how many of the still hundreds of thousands of people of people who are unvaccinated can expect to be sick and what the impact of that will be or would be on bc's health healthcare system's ability to function yeah so that's a moving target and i think you know we we can see that and we see that in children five to 11 and actually it's one of the reasons why uh it's so important to immunize that age group for example and that is the largest age group of people um that are not yet vaccinated and we saw rapid increase in cases and yeah i think we would see we know this virus is endemic now which means it's circulating in the community in many communities we can no longer contain it with the some of the measures that we had early on so it isn't equitable um that if it is transmitting in a community that the vast majority of people who are not protected through vaccination will get infected but we can reduce that risk absolutely dramatically even if it's not a hundred percent we reduce your risk of of getting infected if you've been exposed by 70 80 90 depending on how long it's been since you've been vaccinated but the other thing that we know is that we reduce severe illness even more than that because it's not just our uh the um it's the other parts of our immune system that help us prevent severe disease as well so yes we have some modeling you've seen some modeling that came out just this week looking at vaccination rates in communities and transmission rates in communities that came out from the simon phraser group and we have not specifically said what percentage of those unvaccinated will uh at least i've not seen that because it's a moving target as immunization rates go up and as transmission moves around in different communities our next question is from bell peary cbc hello there um of course we need our answers please in english and french dr henry so people in communities in bc's north who want to get their children vaccinated are concerned about the lack of appointment times in prince george it seems there are only six days between now and christmas when children vaccination clinics are being held is there a plan to increase that so more people can access vaccines for their children absolutely and i maybe i'll turn it over to the minister because yes you know we are planning across the province it's been a challenge in the last few days for many reasons but yes there is a plan and i think um with respect to the north i'd say that that people should know that the details of timing of vaccine arrivals which come directly to regions from the federal the central federal uh depot were quite uncertain last week and the vaccines in the north were late arriving in this did it did and has affected the early the early appointments once the vaccines arrive in a health authority from those depots the federal government depots or from manufacturers vaccine has to be unpacked divided up repacked in place on trucks for distribution far and wide to communities across the health authorities this takes significant time and has to align with very particular cold chain requirements it's because because of that that we've been doing so much work to prepare our pharmacy system and i may talk about that briefly in a second so um it takes vaccine for example six to eight hours to thaw before it's ready to use in clinics and the delay in arrival makes it a challenge especially with some of the significant weather we're seeing around the province for that reason north and health has a practice of delaying one to two days we'll be on the rest of the province in timing and scheduling clinics in order to risk manage the risk of having to reschedule large numbers of residents when vaccine doesn't arrive on time the decision was made to defer the start of the nha and iha campaign to wednesday december 1st to ensure the availability of vaccine in every clinic and um and needless to say uh is a priority in the north because um we continue to see higher transmission in the north should be said that test positivity in the north is coming down which is a good sign it's still dramatically higher than the provincial average it has come down from a seven-day rolling average of around 20 percent through much of october and november to about uh 12 percent uh as of today which is good news of course test positivity across the province is down at three percent which is considerably below as well for the province as a whole but the north has a priority we've made i think extraordinary progress uh in the north with our immunization clinics for first and second doses it's a priority obviously for booster doses everywhere in the province and we're going to continue to do that i just want to say finally that we have and dr henry referred to this um people are asking i think how you're going to do all this that we have a very significant uh number of children there are about 349 000 children between 5 and 11 in bc how are you going to do that and the booster doses and the continuing first and second doses and part of that is the work we've been doing with the bc pharmacy association since august to prepare the pharmacy sector to be a major player to date and dr henry referred to this we have about 200 pharmacies able to offer appointments and COVID-19 vaccinations through m's bc by the end of next week there'll be a further 300 at it and by early january 2022 there will be up to a thousand pharmacies involved so increasingly pharmacies are going to take on the burden and the responsibility and extraordinary responsibility of the of the booster dose campaign or a much greater share of it in the future as we focus on on vaccinating children 5 to 11 in the months of december and january i also want to say finally 1,056,000 influenza vaccines have been administered in bc 1,056,414 have been administered as of november 29th and we tend to get more it's more delayed data in that case but that is a significant number it's at least that and more than 800,000 of those been done by community pharmacy so community pharmacy is a big part of our campaign you're going to see that in the coming while and the north is absolutely a priority for vaccination you can you've seen this in the relentless effort to vaccinate people that's been led as well by community leaders in the north and we're very appreciative of that the north this is not a question of responsibility it's just a fact and we're going to work hard to ensure that the children in the north will have great capacity to be vaccinated it's important for them and for everyone and in addition to that when we will continue to add to our capacity during this period and i think it's an important role of the pharmacy especially community will play a more important role especially for those at the end now do you have a follow-up yes please dr henry you're messaging around avoiding crowded spaces i'm feeling a bit confused i'm assuming others might be as well i mean you're still able to you know don't be in a crowded space but you're still able to attend a sporting event or a concert do we know enough about this new variant to know that being fully vaccinated in those types of situations is enough to protect us and in English and French please sure you know we we know that with the delta variant which this is very similar to and we don't yet know the increased transmissibility we don't yet know all of these other things about the omicron and yes we do know that you can go into these that if you're fully vaccinated we mitigate the risk and yes we know that seeded events and that's one of the reasons why we have some other measures in place seeded events mask wearing in those environments mitigates the risk of transmission of this virus and the other important things that that i've been going on and on about for a long time now is staying away from others is you're sick not going if you're not feeling well making sure that you do keep your mask on when you're moving about and when you're around things or if you're not eating or drinking and you know these are all important things that will help us get through this period of time but we have to find that balance we can't stop all those important things whether it's arts or music or sports or school or going to work we need to find ways to do these going to school going to university to do them in the best way that we can mitigating the risk the best ways that we can and the we've done that pretty well here in bc we're not seeing major outbreaks related to to sporting events or concerts and i had the slightly terrifying but wonderful experience of going to a live music event and you know it was sit down indoors there was a limited number of people but it was fantastic and it's important for us to be able to do those things you don't realize how much of your emotional and mental health is involved with being able to have shared experiences of music or art or sports with others so we are trying to find that balance it is a challenge right now when there's still a lot of uncertainty and we're going to be watching very carefully particularly over the next few weeks and as i said we're doing enhanced surveillance we're monitoring the travel we're working with colleagues around the world to understand the impact of this new variant but at the same time we're trying to live through this pandemic here in bc yes we know that we limit the risks of covid-19 when we're vaccinated it's very obvious when you see the people and the fact that we're 50 times more more likely to be at the hospital if we're not vaccinated so it's obvious of course and it will continue to be the case also when we are sitting we are much less vulnerable in these conditions in a 100% vaccinated audience and at the same time when we are here we are not trying to go here or there or how we can it can be when we are at the beginning i think it's a big difference and so it will continue to be important to analyze the evidence but that being these measures are the necessary measures it was the case at the beginning of the pandemic and in this case now of the virus of course to be vaccinated of course to wear a mask of course and other measures that can limit your risk that's all the time we have for today this concludes today's event thank you everyone for joining