 I'm B.C.'s Minister of Health. To my right is Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.'s provincial health officer. To my left is Dr. Penny Ballum, who is the Executive Lead of Immunization B.C. and also the Chair of Vancouver Coastal Health. We're honoured to be here on the territory of the Musqueam, of the Squamish, of the Slewa-tooth First Nations. Today we're going to be providing an update on the immunization efforts in British Columbia. I want to just acknowledge Dr. Ballum's here, I think she'd be the first to say the extraordinary effort of people in public health who worked with Dr. Henry and Immunization B.C. who worked with Dr. Ballum at every level. The people managing logistics at hundreds of locations in every part of this vast province have been extraordinary, I think, have done a remarkable job so far and there's more, of course, to do. I want to acknowledge Dr. Ballum's here, I think she'd be the first to say the extraordinary effort of all of us, I want to acknowledge all the doctors and nurses and health sciences professionals, the pharmacists, the dental hygienists, the firefighters, the ambulance paramedics, so many more who have been part of the direct immunization program and then the people who have worked outside and with people and helped people with the immunization experience everywhere in B.C. Many of them working in the travel industries and the airline industry and some cases and other cases with the cruise industry who have made, I think, our immunization campaign in B.C., something that every British Columbian, every British Columbian can be proud of. So I'm going to now hand it over to Dr. Bonnie Henry and Dr. Henry and Dr. Ballum are going to give a presentation, speak a little bit about the Vax for B.C. campaign and give a presentation and then I'll come back to say a few words, then we're happy to be able to hear from Dr. Ballum again. Thank you very much and good morning. I'd like to begin today by thanking each and every one of the millions of British Columbians like me who stepped up to be vaccinated over the past, it's almost nine months now. Because of this small act, we have been able to reopen our province and move to step three of V.C.'s restart plan slowly, methodically and safely. And while we've made tremendous progress with our immunization plan, there is of course more work to do. We know that some people still struggle to find a convenient time in their day to get immunized and others may still have questions and be hesitant about the vaccine. We are here today to answer some of those questions and to let you know how safe and effective these vaccines are and that their saving lies throughout our province are in place here every day. British Columbians are stepping up and getting vaccinated. Over 80% of us over the age of 12 are now vaccinated with one dose and every day more and more people are getting their second dose. And we now know the majority of our new cases, some of which have increased in the last little while, are amongst people who have not yet received their vaccine. So there is more work to do if we need to protect each other, the people we are closest to and of course put this pandemic behind us. And here today we are going to talk a little bit more about how we are going to do that. But first of all, I did want to give you some information. The fact is that data shows us that less than 5% of the cases of COVID-19 that we are seeing right now are amongst people who are fully vaccinated. 96% are people who have received just one dose or 78% are among people who have not been vaccinated at all. And as we know, that is a small proportion of people in this province. It shows that people have received two doses of vaccine are significantly less likely to be hospitalized or to have severe illness. This compares to the high rate of COVID amongst unvaccinated people but eligible people here in BC. 78% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 are completely unvaccinated and a further 18% have only received their first dose. This is why it is extremely important that we all get both doses of vaccine. And now is our time to do that. Not only to protect ourselves, but to protect those around us. We know that this virus is transmitted to those we are closest to. People we live with, our close family, our friends when we are socializing. And importantly, we know that not everybody mounts a strong immune response even with two doses of vaccine and that our seniors and elders still can be at risk if we introduce the vaccine into their environment. So starting today, we are making it even easier for people to get vaccinated to help protect themselves from COVID-19. As part of the Vax for BC campaign, each health authority will be offering new and unique ways for people to get their first or second dose of the vaccine. From mobile clinics to a custom Vax van to walk in Wednesday. We will have more information about that. People across British Columbia will be able to get vaccinated on your way to work during your lunch break or even when the cooling off at a lake. These next two weeks are crucial to our immunization campaign and most importantly, protecting our province and putting the pandemic in our rear-view mirror. And important for us to make sure we have the best protection possible as more people are traveling into British Columbia and as we move into the fall so that we can move to step four of our restart, we can get back to school, we can get back to work safely. And we will be able to do any other things as well. Being fully vaccinated means getting back to the things we love to do. Like visiting our loved ones in long-term care. Like dancing, attending music festivals, the arts, fall fairs and weddings without restrictions. And knowing that more people will be traveling here soon. As we said, more than 80% of people 12 and older have received their first dose. And the reasons are all around us. Just talk to your neighbors. Talk to your family. Talk to your friends. We know that these vaccines are safe and they work. And this is remarkable progress. But there is more to do and now is our time to push ahead. Now is the time for VACs for BC. And as we plan our celebrations for the upcoming long weekend in BC day, I encourage everyone to talk to their friends and loved ones to help support them to get vaccinated so that we can share more special events in the long-term care. And I also want to take this next few weeks for all of us to share our gratitude for those front-line heroes who have been with us through this last long 18 months to support everyone who has got vaccinated whether it is people in our immunization clinics or healthcare workers across the province working in long-term care. But also those heroes that we know have been making our lives better every single day. Whether it is the people who work in our grocery stores, garbage workers, parks workers, our restaurant workers, childcare, schools, food processing. There are so many people that have made a difference in this last 18 months. And now, by getting vaccinated, we can put this behind us. And I am going to turn it now over to Dr. Penny Ballum who is going to give you some more details. Thank you so much, Dr. Henry and Minister Dix. I will just start by saying what a privilege it has been to actually be part of a program that has brought such hope to our province and has had such a significant impact. Probably over the 35 to 40 years of my career , I would say the most significant initiative I have ever been involved in. And I think as Dr. Henry has said, the public has really stepped up for us. If you look at this next slide, this just gives you a bit of an idea from those in the age cohort of 95 and over all the way down to our young people 12 to 17, you can see the remarkable effort that they have made to get themselves vaccinated. And we continue to do more of vaccinations. And that is the purpose of really this announcement today is that we are not there yet. We have had incredible success and incredible commitment by our public and by the program that has enabled all of these people over 3.7 million people to get vaccinated. But we have to keep going. We have to capture more people especially in younger age groups to get their first dose and then their second and we have to complete our dose twos. But I just want to take this moment to just say we are getting themselves vaccinated. The majority of British Columbians well done. Well done. You have allowed our province to go back to things that are near normal. You have allowed our economy to really start to get going to the extent that we want it to be with our final program of restarting. So we are on our way. We are not done. We have more work to do. We have a lot to do. It is really about that last push over the next few weeks to make sure that we are capturing everybody that needs to participate in our vaccination program. So this slide basically shows you that we have just under a million people in our province that still remain unvaccinated. And even though we are over 80% that is still a lot of people and that is what this is all about. We want to reach these people. We are doing this for the next few months. You can see the numbers here. They range from nearly 15% unvaccinated in Vancouver Coastal up to basically another 30% to go in the Northern Health Authority and in between in the other three health authorities. So we have done really well what we have got more to do. In order to encourage and enable and incent and basically make it as easy as possible for those last 900,000 people to come and participate in the vaccination campaign, we need our program to be as resilient as possible, flexible, accessible, innovative and really using all of the creativity we can to make it as easy as possible to get those people in. We know the vast majority of them will get vaccinated. They want to get vaccinated but you have to make it convenient. We have got to make it an experience that they will choose to do. Because as Dr. Henry has outlined, the impact is so significant. It protects our families. It protects our schools. It allows us to get back to normal and it is really what it is all about in terms of turning our backs on this pandemic. So what is Vax for BC? It is a campaign really. It is a campaign to help people get vaccinated. As I said, as many British Columbians as possible to get vaccinated. And it is also a chance to thank, as Dr. Henry has outlined, the many, many people starting in the health sector and with the community partners that have been part of taking care of people with COVID and vaccinating our public all the way out to all the various work sectors and people in our province who have kept things going. It is so lucky in this province to have had our children in school throughout the last year. It has been a remarkable effort and it has really made a difference. But working in our food industry, pharmacies, all the other businesses that have kept going through a combination of in-person service and service from people working from home. So a remarkable effort and we want to recognize them all. We really think it is a chance for the people who have not yet been vaccinated to get in there to make a choice to access a clinic, a pop-up clinic, a drive-through clinic, a mobile van or a big mass vaccination center to walk in or make an appointment and get their shot over the coming weeks. These next two weeks are important. We have been vaccinating 400,000 to 430,000 people a week over the last couple of months through June and July. It has been such a relief at the beginning of June to suddenly have vaccine available. We were no longer constrained by the amount of vaccine and that allowed us to maximize the capacity of all our clinics upwards of 400 different activities, 400 different settings where people could go across this province. So we have been working hard over these last two months to actually drive as many people as possible, as many as we could cope with to get their vaccine, both those ones and those twos. Now since we have got to the level that we are, we are going to have less demand but the group that we are after, those 900,000 are really, really important. As I said, they are going to take us initiatives to really define accessible community-based opportunities as Dr. Henry says, on the way to work, on the way home, at work. When you are doing your activities on the weekend, having fun, we want to be there and actually welcome you in and give you your shot. Get the jab. We are encouraging people to use our incredible online system to register and book because that makes it easy for both them to plan and also optimising walking capacity across clinics, across the province. And, you know, so if you haven't had your first dose or you are within the eligible timeframe of 49 days since your first dose and you are ready for dose 2, we want you to be able to quickly get vaccinated. We are, as Dr. Henry mentioned, we have picked August 4th just after our BC day weekend as walk-in Wednesday. And on that day, we will open all our clinics to just walking capacity. And we will we have preserved 20,000 shots for those who will walk in and they will be paired up with the people who are already booked in those clinics. So on that day, this will be a massive day for our province, for people to go in, walk in, get their shot, dose 1 or dose 2. And they don't have to book ahead although they will continue to have that choice. So as you've seen, we've seen some, you know, evidence of this kind of approach in the health authorities across the province. We had a clinic at Playland the other day in Vancouver coastal. You've seen we've had clinics on the beaches around the lower mainland on Vancouver Island. We've had mobile vans. We've had some really terrific community partners who have helped us run mobile clinics all around the interior and the north. So I think the health authorities have done a remarkable job finding innovative ways and these next two weeks, this one and next one are an opportunity to really ramp that up and take advantage of the vaccine availability and the capacity that we still have in our program. And looking ahead, you know, what we know is that the demand for a vaccine will start to drop off. We've seen that across the province, across the country that because we're now at over 80% dose 1 vaccinated and 60%, just the sheer volume of what we've done will not continue. So what we're going to do over the course of August and September, after these two weeks when we're driving people through our full capacity, we will be adjusting our clinics and we'll be adjusting them to actually focus on our remaining people who remain unvaccinated and continuing to be available for people who will become eligible for their dose 2. And, you know, essentially we're going to shift. You've seen a lot of large mass immunization clinics and we will be reducing some of their numbers and in some cases reducing their size and then upping the number of small intermittent clinics that are in different communities, in different places, addressing different groups. We have, you know, just in the last few weeks, have had some examples of groups that have come to our attention that we need to be active, to be able to respond to. We have seafarers, international seafarers that have come, that haven't been able to get a vaccine. We've got a program that has to be able to respond to those. We know our 12 to 17 year old group of kids is still a group that we need to do more work to get them in and get them vaccinated. We have a return to school program at the end of August and into September for both our school kids in schools and our post secondary students. But in the meantime, we want to go to where they are in the summer. There are summer camps, the beaches and try and capture them. So we really want to be available to take care of people like the incredible international firefighters that are coming into our province to help protect us. I've talked about our seafarers. We've got a lot of work camps in the north and the interior. We've got international farm workers that continue to come and help support our agriculture industry. And all these things we need to be paying attention to, be able to respond to while we're continuing to drive the ability for people who have yet to decide that they want to get vaccinated just make it really friendly, really accessible and easy thing to do. As we work through the adjustments we will be making through August. We will be dropping probably the volume of weekly vaccines from about 430,000 down to about 150,000. And by the end of August it will probably be down around 120,000. And so given that, you will see some adjustments. But the principles on which the health authorities will make their decisions are easy to access, responsive to where we have more catch up in those ones that we have to do. And just making it an experience that works for all the different local issues across our whole province. So it will be continued effort and I think the thing that's an important message is our VAX for BC program is just keeping it in the public profile. We have work to do. We've got to catch up. All of the different things that you will see in terms of this campaign will help remind people we need to keep going. We're not there yet and we need to protect our province. So on the recognition side of our VAX BC program it's critically important that in order to have administered more than 6.5 million doses it's been an enormous effort. It's been an enormous effort by people in the health care sector who have actually worked to organize these clinics. The community partners we have 12 organizations who the minister had mentioned have helped us run these clinics. They've been terrific. They've taught us a lot about how to be in the hospitality industry. Not the hospital industry but the hospitality industry and welcome people and make them feel comfortable in a process that they may be nervous about. We've had thousands of people working with us on this program and we've had a lot. We have all the other heroes in our province our firefighters, our teachers, our bus drivers, our agricultural workers our food processors our hospital workers all these groups of people that have kept our economy going and have helped us deliver this program. So we want to recognize their efforts and what you'll see is a lot of online opportunities, social media opportunities, posters and ways that we can recognize British Columbians to share their messages of gratitude for our public, for getting themselves vaccinated and for all the workers and the heroes who have actually made it possible. And you know that is a really, really important part of our Vax for BC campaign. So I'm going to close there and just thank all of you for your interest and say that we're this is a move now into really what will be hopefully the final lap of our dose one, dose two campaign over the coming weeks and months we need to be ready for all the other uncertainties that we will be dealing with but it's very good news I just want to end by congratulating our incredible public effort to come in and get vaccinated and then to say be part of our celebration with us. Thanks so much Minister. Thank you very much Dr. Balm, thank you Dr. Henry and just to say in conclusion about the next two weeks and why it's so important it's a way to do that is to look back about where we've come from when you look at the numbers which are I think extraordinary 80.6% of all those eligible over 12 received dose one as of Sunday night 61.3% over is increasing still at more than a percent a day if you look at our dose two immunizations in the slide that Dr. Henry talked about from June 15th to July 15th see just an enormous difference in dose two immunization in the last three weeks 1,150,000 British Columbians in the three weeks ending Saturday night 1,150,000 received their second doses and 20,000 had received their first doses in other words that number, the number of people who are partially vaccinated have one dose is reducing and continuing to reduce in our province such that as we come out of the BC day long weekend we're expecting two thirds of all eligible British Columbians will have been fully vaccinated in that number to continue to grow and we have to continue to push as we have done in the last three weeks in the last three weeks about 40,000 new people a week on average 33,000 in the most recent week and we have to continue to push those numbers and this opportunity the next two weeks Vax for BC is an opportunity for everyone all those who are eligible to get their dose two on a walk-in basis all those who are eligible to get their dose one immunization this is an important critical time to continue to push we have had in BC as all of you know and the numbers show this one of the most successful immunization campaigns against COVID-19 in the world but we continue and need to do better we must do better it makes people safer it makes all of us safer it makes everyone in our community and we have to raise those levels of immunization beyond which we are now on August 4th we will be having a special day a special walk-in day with extra doses available for everyone to walk in and we want to encourage people to take an opportunity on that day but you don't need to wait till August 4th there will be opportunities everywhere in BC before that and so I think that effort that continuing effort by British Columbians just over 80% beyond 85% and then to our next goals after that is going to be an important and critical thing to do so today I ask everybody in BC everyone who has not received their first dose everyone who is not eligible to receive their second dose if they haven't registered to register and if they haven't booked an appointment to book an appointment or to take advantage of the dozens and dozens of locations where you can walk in and get your COVID-19 vaccine today and over the next couple of weeks let's again do what we have been doing throughout which is to move the vaccination numbers in a positive direction it will help all of us it will help our communities and it is something we can do for ourselves, for our families, for those we love and for those we don't know so thank you very much we are happy now to take your questions please press star 1 to enter the queue you will be limited to one question and one follow-up please also remember to take your phone off mute you will not be audible until your name is called media in person who wish to ask a question please make your way to the microphone on the far side of the room our first question today is from Mike Hager, Globe and Mail please go ahead thanks for the update everyone you have been, this is for anyone who wants to answer you have been reticent so far to use some sort of punitive measures to get people vaccinated specifically vaccine passports I was talking to a mayor in the interior of a hotspot at Grant Forks he said that maybe not vaccine passports because those could violate people's freedoms but maybe segregating public events so that those who are fully vaccinated don't have to worry about those who aren't mingling with them and transmitting the virus so what are your thoughts on when you make the call to actually use more punitive measures and are you contemplating any measures like that? Well thanks and I will turn it over to Dr. Henry in a moment one of the things I want to note in our focus in the next two weeks is to do something exceptionally positive overwhelmingly I get emails correspondence, letters, cards every day from British Columbians talking about their vaccine experience and that reflects the work of our volunteers, our staff teams our doctors, our nurses our pharmacists, everyone who is delivering vaccine in British Columbia many of them have described it as an emotional experience others have expressed joy and you've seen that in their pictures on social media and what they're doing so what we're going to do for the next two weeks is drive immunization every possible opportunity in the next couple of weeks and encouragement for people to get vaccinated and the benefits of that for you, for the community and for everyone else are clear and we want to provide that opportunity in as we do in British Columbia I think a positive, united and joyful way on Wednesday night I'll be joined by Dr. Henry and the leader of the opposition Shirley Bond who took about two seconds to agree when I talked to her about doing this we'll be doing a telephone town hall meeting for example in Prince George together I think our unity of purpose as a community is important let me say this though about the spread and the transmission of COVID-19 and this is important in public spaces important for businesses that public health will be if there are any significant transmission in business they'll be closing on a temporary basis yes but closing those businesses it is in everybody's interest to stop the transmission of COVID-19 together that we will be taking and we are taking actions to do that that being vaccinated is not mandatory in our province and it won't be mandatory in our province but should you not be vaccinated measures will be taken whether it's long-term care already announced or others to protect everyone the community from COVID-19 so that is happening and that is I think inevitable so and that is what the steps we've taken in some areas already and should there be transmission of COVID-19 those steps are continued to be there and continued to be taken by public health but we have to I think acknowledge that it's been our success as a province in coming together across all lines partisan and regional and other lines and cultural lines to come together to address COVID-19 and that's what we're going to continue to do and I'll hand it over to Dr Henry to talk a little bit about the public health issues . I just want to start by talking about how remarkable it is that we have 80% of people who actually are immunized and recognize the importance of this so really important there are many different reasons while that other 20% have not yet been immunized and many of those reasons have to do with convenience making it available to people it also has to do with confidence in the vaccine and the importance of people being immunized around the world and we're following that information carefully we're looking at the safety we're understanding how well these vaccines work those questions can be answered for people so building that confidence in vaccine is really important as well and that's what we're trying to do over the next little while it's really important that we give everybody all of the opportunities to be immunized and to make that choice and to be immunized so I encourage everybody right now if you know somebody who hasn't been immunized to talk to them talk to them about your experience about why you did it the reasons are all around us as I've said many times in terms of immunization passports it is a choice to be immunized but there are consequences for people who are not immunized and that's going to be more important for us as we head into the fall and this will increase as we know that we're likely to see other respiratory viruses and incredibly important from my perspective is protecting those people who we know may not mount as good immune response from vaccine and that in particular is long-term care and in our healthcare sector so this is the time to be immunized to protect yourself, to protect your family to protect your community and as we move through this next few weeks it is an important time for us all to do the best that we can to get us through this pandemic and learn how we can live with the COVID-19 so yes, we want to make sure that these opportunities are there everywhere for people to get their questions answered and to have access to vaccine but we will be looking at the measures that we need to put in place to protect people, particularly those who are most vulnerable to COVID-19 and to move into the fall I did have one other thought but it's lost at the moment so let's start Did you have a follow-up? Yes, please. Sorry, it sounds like you're hinting at stronger measures for unvaccinated workers in healthcare setting than long-term care so can you just clarify those statements what percentage of this remaining 20% simply do not want to get vaccinated for ideological reasons? I think we all know people like that in our personal lives and wondering whether you can quantify that and how you can quantify that and how troubling that is for you. Yes, we've already talked about in long-term care that people who aren't immunized need to take additional infection prevention and control measures including masking and in all areas where they're providing services to residents and will need to be tested on a regular basis and we are working through that but first we need to give everybody the opportunity to be immunized. That is really important in healthcare and I have very little patients for people who aren't immunized in healthcare and that will be we've had a vaccinator mask policy and we will have a very similar policy that if people choose not to be immunized and you work in healthcare then you will not be able to work in certain settings without taking additional measures there will be consequences for that decision. Sorry, I'm not using it today. We've done surveys we've asked people about why they aren't immunized and we've asked people why they aren't immunized and as we've mentioned most people it's convenience or they have questions and they want to see there's quite a few people who are waiting to see what was happening what was happening with other people leaders in their community and they wanted their questions answered so this is the time for those people to step up and get immunized to talk to your physician talk to your pharmacist come into our clinics it's a very positive experience we have immunizers now who have immunized millions of people and they know how to do it in a way that leaves your anxiety I know there's people who have needle phobias who have had an amazing experience in our clinics because we've set them up to make them calm and peaceful and making sure people get their needs met if you're somebody who faints at the site of needles we can give it to you there's a lot of people who are lying down there are many things that we'll do to help answer your questions and alleviate your fears in these clinics we do know that the people who are actually anti-vaccine or dead set against getting immunized is a very small percentage overall in BC it's about 1 or 2% of people that never get immunized in for COVID studies have shown us that it's maybe as many as 5% of people but that's a very small percent they tend to be very organized and very vocal especially on social media and this is the time for us to say we can answer your questions and we can address some of the misinformation and sometimes disinformation that is out there to help support you and being confident in getting yourself protected as well just to put it in context this is not new you'll recall in 2019 there was a number of measles cases in BC and we responded with a very significant effort to immunize school-aged British Columbians and what we saw and what happened was a significant number of people stepped in and got immunized at that time but be clear that should there be an outbreak in a school of measles and you're not immunized your child will be excluded from school for that period so there are consequences and we have a registration system now in place for those immunizations so this is not new there are consequences to not being immunized even though it is not mandatory and our problems any more than measles immunization is mandatory but it's important to understand for the protection of the whole community that there have to be consequences for that but what we saw and what is also I think remarkable in this immunization campaign is the response of young people and I want to know we talk about statistics a lot and everything else but once we as we move through the next few weeks you're going to see the group of people 18 to 24 actually more immunized in our province than every five-year group up to 49 in other words young people have embraced and engaged with immunization and we saw this last year when we provided more opportunities for the young people in grade 9 and 10 and 11 and 12 who had not previously been immunized because it was not in general their choice but that of their parents who chose to be immunized in their own right young people are getting immunized in British Columbia and there's always lots of talk about young people when I want to say this those 18 to 24 have absolutely stepped up we need them to continue to do it we need to raise that number in that category as in every other one I think young people have engaged in this campaign and this effort for immunization absolutely having faced a lot of the challenges in the pandemic and understanding the risk young people inevitably are more active socially than the rest of us that group of people is getting immunized and it's very impressive. Our next question is from the phone Lisa Yuzda, News 1130 back to consequences a little bit and this push for going into the fall is from secondary school and high school and wondering will there be some kind of consequence or separation or something for people going into those types of environments who have not been fully vaccinated? I think I'd say first of all and I'll hand it over to Dr. Henry again just to say that there is a real opportunity all around BC in the next two weeks to get vaccinated and that includes people 12-17 who are the last eligible because initially the Pfizer vaccine wasn't approved for those 12-17 until the month of May so they started last there's going to be significant opportunities in the next two weeks for all those 12-17 to get vaccinated and I strongly to say the least recommend that people do so the sooner you get vaccinated in your first vaccine and the sooner the second vaccine and the sooner that you're safe and your family is more safe and your community is more safe so it's that opportunity that's going to be in place and in terms of the back to school there's been an enormous amount of work done for it by that led by school districts but people in community and of course our public health office in particular Dr. Reika Gustafson who has been very involved in that and I'll hand it over to Dr. Henry obviously going back to school is going to be an important consideration and two things we're working as you know we have a provincial committee that's been working very closely with the school district and parent groups and teachers and school staff and yes we want as many of the school staff as well as 12-17 year olds in the school system to be immunized as possible going into the fall and we want it to be as near normal an experience as possible so it's important for all of those who can be immunized to be protected so that we protect those who are not yet eligible for a vaccine and it's not likely we're going to have vaccine for children under the age of 12 until later in the fall maybe near the end of the year so yes it is incredibly important and we'll be working with the school system to make sure as many people as possible are immunized but now is the time to do that especially for young people as they're enjoying the summer and are able to be protected same goes for post-secondary we've been working very closely we have a guided book for post-secondary institutions for how do we get this back into full in classroom experiences and on-campus experiences for young people who absolutely need that they've been so differently affected by the impacts of this pandemic so we are fully committed to that and part of that we'll be making sure vaccines are available for students who are coming in from different places and in the settings on universities and universities are looking at what are the measures they need to take in their setting to make it as safe as possible and so that may mean if you're living in residence that you need to have proof of immunization and we're working with post-secondary institutions to make sure that they do what they need to do in each of those settings to make vaccine as accessible as possible and to put in the right measures so that we can get back to a normal schooling for all young people in September Lisa, did you have a follow-up? I sure do I know that the duration between doses now 49 days, 7 weeks versus 56 days, 8 weeks I'm wondering with the volume of doses being required as Minister Dix was saying over the next few weeks going from like 400,000 to around 110,000 why not decrease the duration between doses to get more people with maximum protection heading into the fall? That's a really good question because there's lots of different issues around that one is we absolutely are functionally decreasing that interval we started at 16 weeks we've gone down to 12 and for most people now at a boat 6 or 7 weeks we'll get their appointment within a day or 2 or 3 and the last bulk of the big bulge of second doses that we've had will be this week so starting next week after at our big Wednesday drop in day that interval will functionally come down again to about 6 or 7 weeks for most people there is a bit of a trade-off there there's more and more evidence coming in being published around the world that shows that having a longer interval, particularly longer than the minimum of 4 weeks does give longer lasting and stronger protection so we want to have that balance for most people somewhere around 6 to 8 weeks is probably best and that will be our recommendation for people and there will be lots of opportunities for people to get that second dose in the next couple of months but for some people we may want to shorten that and I'm thinking about places in the interior where there's clusters or groups of people who are unvaccinated and we're seeing transmission happen and we've seen that in the last week where people who are immunized are not randomly spread around the province they tend to be in communities, clusters groups of people who are together and that's where we see the virus spread and it's spreading very rapidly and there are new variants that we have in people that can spread more easily so it is really important for people to get immunized and in those areas where we're seeing spread we can decrease that interval to get people fully protected as soon as possible. For our next question we're coming back to the room Shannon Patterson, CTV You're hoping these next two weeks will bring that 80% number up realistically getting to 95% or getting to only 5% and we're truly vaccine hesitant is probably not going to happen. Is 80% enough to prevent COVID from just becoming a constant part of our lives into the fall and winter? Is there a number at which you're going to feel like this is going to be low enough we can function? Well I think there's a couple of big things there. COVID is going to be with us for a while. And part of us being immunized and protected is to keep the virus from spreading rapidly so it is and we've seen that work we've seen that work in long-term care homes then we've been doing vaccine effectiveness and continuing to monitor in long-term care and it is very protective when we have those high rates of immunization in both residents and staff. Where we see the problem is as I just mentioned the vaccine rates are not the same everywhere. So we have clusters and communities where it's much lower and that's where the virus can start spreading and it can have interruption of workplaces, of schools of all of those other things. So it is really important across the board to get that immunization rate up and we'll be focusing on some of those communities where there have been issues, there have been questions, there have been access issues. So there's no magic number but as high as we can possibly get and you know I've always been wanting to shoot for 100 but you know the reality is that some people can't be immunized though that's a very small number of people. So this is really the time for people to understand we've now immunized millions of people here in BC, millions of people around the world, we know a lot about these vaccines, we know how they work, we know how safe they are. Now's your time to step up so that you can hear the news. I heard the news that once Prime Minister Macron in France basically said if you want to get into a nightclub or a gym or a restaurant you need to be vaccinated and there was an explosion of people signing up to be vaccinated. This is not likely to be a federal or a provincial mandate here in Canada but if businesses here started requiring vaccination do you think that could be beneficial? Do you think we should go the way we should? Absolutely and I've been talking to business about that. We've had a couple of outbreaks in nightclubs where unvaccinated people and if I was running a nightclub I want to make sure that my staff are protected and yes we absolutely can say to come in here you have to be immunized and that gives people the level of comfort that they're in a safer environment to come to fairs and festivals those indoor environments it is still the same places that we've always known that are most at risk so those are indoor crowded environments where there's poor ventilation. The clusters and the outbreaks we're seeing right now are those environments where people who are unvaccinated are coming together and they're in a wedding there's been a funeral there's been nightclubs there's been indoor settings where people are gathering and right now we don't have enough people with that full protection it can still spread. The good news is that even after a single dose your chances of ending up in hospital or having more severe illness go down dramatically so I think it is well within our rights I know myself I've had people over to my house but only the people are vaccinated I'm not ready yet to have people over who aren't so these are the things that we have to make as choices if you have an outbreak and it's transmitting between staff the business will need to shut down for a period of time those are the ways that we get through this and we protect people. For our next question we're going to stay in the room and go to Joanne Lee Young. Can you talk about vaccination clinics that may have been cancelled or removed or rescheduled because of the wildfires? Joanne Lee Young is a challenge and I know that we've made some particular attempts to try and make up for those but I'll let Dr. Bellman answer that first. Thanks so much Dr. Henry. As you know in the interior in particular and in other parts both the combination of the risk of the fire itself and the smoke and the quality of the air have caused our health authorities to cancel clinics when we do that and it's happened you know for a number of reasons around the province during the heat wave there were clinics that were cancelled because it was just too hot for both staff and you know our public in those things so the process really is we figure out can it be rescheduled locally in the same place in a short period of time if not we arrange for the nearest place for people to be diverted to and often make arrangements for the next few weeks. So that's the kind of expectation of members of a community who have to go farther away further afield to get their vaccine and for sure as soon as it's safe we will come back and usually re-establish a clinic. So it is an ongoing process we've been dealing with these different issues over the last weeks and months and you know I just want to put in a word for the incredible work of the government that's done really hard with our health authorities to make sure everybody is safe and that they can anticipate where things are going to get a bit more gnarly and they're going to have to make a decision to move so that we can do that in an efficient way and let the public know and get them to the next closest spot to get their vaccine. I would say just from memory and the minister may have this question. Our next question is back to the phones. I'm not sure what's going on. Richard, we didn't hear that. Would you mind repeating, please? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I wasn't sure if I heard the minister there, I wasn't sure if he was going to finish. CDC in the United States announced today that they're going to be changing guidance around indoor mask wearing and we'll be able to go up as they have over the last few weeks. We hear calls from people to see the mask mandate come back here in DC. Is it something the province is considering? What would it take to bring back a mandate to wear masks in indoor public spaces here in British Columbia? So we still have that in terms of that is our guidance from public health is that masks be worn in indoor public spaces. I know there have been cases of vaccine in two weeks have passed. But I know many people continue to wear masks in those, particularly those crowded places when you're in close contact with people who you don't necessarily know. So I certainly wear my mask when I go to retail stores on public transit. And those are the messages that people need to have now. Yes, masks have a role to play. And when you're in those environments where the virus can spread rapidly. So indoor public spaces. And yes, we do absolutely recommend and I know many people continue to do that and we encourage that. I just want to say a word for people who have come from other provinces, other countries where mask wearing has become in some places more polarized. And we've seen that in the United States, we've seen that in some other provinces. And I think most people are doing the right thing. And I want to say thank you. And I appreciate that. And to continue doing that. We are getting there. But we're not yet at the place where we can let up these measures. And our recommendations to everybody will continue to be wearing masks in indoor public spaces. Particularly when they're crowded spaces is something that we all do to protect ourselves and to protect ourselves from the virus. And I think we have a follow-up. Since you get from a lot of people when you see these numbers of unvaccinated people or those that are getting sick, Harkins back to something the premier said is that they're blowing it for the rest of us. If we continue to see people not get vaccinated, what sort of things could we see in British Columbia in the fall? Should we be worried about a fourth of the numbers? Because people continue not to get vaccinated. I wish I had answers to all of the questions. What we're seeing around the world and we're obviously watching countries that are in a different place than we are, is that we're starting to see a new pandemic as I think my colleagues in the U.S. CDC called it. A pandemic in the unvaccinated. So yes, we see transmission as the numbers I showed earlier indicate. But we need to go back to the basics , the goals of our pandemic response. One is to prevent morbidity and mortality. So sickness and death. Two is to prevent overwhelming of our health care system because we know that affects people with COVID but also with all the other health needs that people have. Third is to prevent societal disruption. So we're now at that place where most people are protected and importantly protected from hospitalization and from death. So those things are really important and now we have to balance that with disruption of society because we know that that has health impacts and that has mental health impacts as well. So I don't necessarily see us having, I don't see us having to go back to the same across the board restrictions that we had in place even a few months ago in March and April and May. But I do see that it will be individual level, local things that will have to happen. So if there's transmission in a workplace, that workplace will have to close temporarily in that place. There may be an outbreak in a long-term care home that we know the measures that we have to take to prevent transmission and to stop outbreaks in long-term care and we see that every fall. So we do see across the board where we're shutting everything down like before, even if we start to see a surge in more cases, particularly in unvaccinated people. Our next question is from Susanna De Silva, CBC. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Just looking at the interior in particular and the unvaccinated rate is significantly higher there than it seems to be elsewhere. Do you know what it is about that we're shutting down? I'll start and maybe I can turn it over to Valem. So we've seen that it's a different challenge in both the interior and the north where there are many smaller communities that are quite physically distant from each other where there are pockets of people who have not had access to vaccine where we've had challenges like wildfires and the smoke and many other things going on. So partly there are some hesitant about the vaccine, don't yet have the confidence in the vaccine and we've seen that in health care workers and in some communities across both the interior and the north and part of it is having the resources and the access to vaccine. So that's what we're going to be focusing on particularly in the next couple of weeks is making sure we can get out there to a community to every community to answer those questions and to make it convenient to get out there. So we're seeing with the increased rates that people are recognizing the importance that this virus is still transmitting and we need to do the work on the ground as Dr. Valem calls it our ground game to get out there and get people the information they need and part of that is talking to your physician, talking to your pharmacist, talking to leaders in the community about the vaccine and about how important it is. We've covered most of it but I think our ground game, we're learning a lot about how people respond and what's the safe sort of channel into which they'll go and get a vaccine and it's interesting. Some will come with their family. Some will come with their church group. Some will wait and wait until suddenly their workplace decides let's all go get vaccinated today and it's been a real learning for us to see all these different ways that bring people to finally decide to get their vaccine and when you have as many communities as you do in a place like the interior it's like, you know, tens of communities that we have to access and get to and talk to and find the local leaders it just takes more time and that's what the VACS for BC campaign is about. We have some time now. You can see we've reduced the vaccination numbers from about 430,000 a week down to about 150,000. It allows us a bit more time to take that individual approach to different groups, different populations, different geographic areas in our province and just get in there and work even harder to bring them in. So VACS for BC, we're ready for you. Sorry, Minister. Just to say in the interior health authority, I think it's important especially when we look at case numbers, understand that those have changed over time, that at the beginning of the pandemic in March and April of 2020 a very significant portion of the cases were in Vancouver and then it became Fraser Health and now it's Interior Health. One of the things in this current period which has the most cases in the last short period and I think I would say this, we saw in July of 2020 some increases of cases in the Kelowna area and the community stepped up and addressed that and at that time and as you recall that early increase in cases in Kelowna and people let and in the community. Mayor Bazran was a big part of it of course all of the folks at Interior Health were a very significant part of it. Colleagues in the legislature at the time such as Norm Letnik played a real role in ensuring that especially in smaller communities where inevitably the vaccine isn't available seven days a week and you're not able to book appointments seven days a week because you can at the Italian cultural center in my constituency that we're making efforts to make it more available and we just have to continue to do the work. There is going to be a tendency and you see that in the debate in other countries. As a reference to France earlier there was discussion in the United States here in BC I think our strength is going to be to join together and to work together and to drive those numbers day after day of immunization across all communities to not divide or point to particular communities but to work everywhere and that's what Vax for BC is all about and I'm very proud particularly proud of the efforts of Interior Health for example the number of individual clinics in small places and big places from Scotch Creek to Cologne all over Interior Health where first dose and eligible second dose drop in immunization clinics are happening where we've raised not from the low 50s or below 50 in a community like Rutland to almost 70 in a fairly short period of time gaining ground in communities such as that because of efforts of community leaders and of Interior Health and of health professionals and of communities to make it happen I think we can do that and I don't think it's becoming polarized around these questions that we do it but it's in working together that we're going to raise those numbers up and I believe that will happen and continue to happen in Interior Health and I'm very proud of the efforts of everybody every part of British Columbia to do that. Susanna did you have a follow up? I did thank you just briefly if you could say if you have an idea but also why not use family doctors we talk about trying different ways to reach people to bring family doctors into the process. That's a great question. Our family doctors are a critical part of helping us be successful with the campaign and this has been if you look at the vaccines we've been working with over the last eight months these are tough logistical vaccines in the early days the Pfizer vaccine was at least 70 degrees and the documentation for the cold chain of the vaccines is very rigorous and quite demanding. The provincial system that we have has been a massive enabler of us to be able to plan, book and execute our vaccination campaign. These things are all ways that make it much more complex for individual family doctors offices to actually do the vaccinations themselves. We have involved our family doctors many of them both active family doctors who are currently in practice and those who are retired have been a really critical part of our immunization clinics all around the province and they will continue to play a really important role and as the minister has indicated many of them have worked with their panels of patients that they look after and basically have individual interactions with them to encourage them to get vaccinated and we have worked with them to provide them the information about where they have got gaps in vaccination rates amongst their population. We have a really great initiative led by Dr. Morgan Price that is training family doctors to be facilitators of discussions with the public about getting vaccinated. We have had a lot of different ways and have been a big part of making our campaign successful and we really are we will continue to involve them and at some point when logistics are easier and the system demands that will be on a family doctor participating are easier to link them up then there will be opportunities in the future for them to really play a role in immunization generally. Something they do but there is probably more that they can do in the future with some of the legacy products that have been built during this pandemic campaign. Just to say a couple things obviously family docs and community physicians have been an integral part as a pharmacist in providing information to people about immunization. In much of the province COVID immunization is mostly done through public health so it's not a role that physicians have been doing in many parts of the province but they have been integral as Dr Ballum has said in making sure that COVID immunizations get out there. But the logistics of the vaccines continue to be a challenge and they continue to come in large volume trays that have to be ultra low so those things that we need to evolve over time as more and more people get immunized but the efficiency of the vaccine clinics that Dr Ballum and her team and our team have set up have just been amazing. We could not have immunized provided over 6 million doses of immunization if we had not had those high volume efficient immunization clinics and it is because we have had the involvement of nurses and physicians and firefighters and everybody else that we have been able to do that. As we transition into the fall we will be in a different place and we will be working and are working with our physician and pharmacy colleagues to make it more available in a different way as needed. In terms of the number of people who are out of province we have seen more people movement within the province and this is the same issues that we have had since this pandemic began. We bring the risk with us from where we come and we take it back from where we have been and we have seen that people gathering together mostly indoors for family events. We have had weddings, parties, birthday parties, families coming together and yes people from other provinces have been involved in that as well. I don't have a percentage off the top of my head but the more mobile we are and the more contact we have the more risk there is of transmission and we knew that when we went to step three that we expected to see an increase in cases. What we aren't seeing and what we are continuing to watch is an increase in people in hospital needing ICU care or people who are dying from COVID-19. So those are the metrics that we will continue to watch and what we have for ourselves and for those that we are close to is to be protected through vaccine. We have time for one more question today. Our last question is from Ron Shaw, check news, please go ahead. Hi there. Quebec is offering a third dose of mRNA vaccine to help people whose vaccinations aren't recognized if they want to travel. Some places in the European Union and the U.S. If you mix your either Pfizer or Moderna vaccines and you are not considered vaccinated is BC considering at any point allowing a third dose? So obviously across the country we are looking at this and this is something that is very much in flux and for those many people who have written me and I have written notes back right now we just need to be patient. We are working with Canada and Canada is working internationally to make sure that we all adhere to the standard and what I would like to see is that WHO approved vaccines in any combination and we are seeing that we are not the only country that is using AstraZeneca. There are 15 more than almost 20 million people in the U.K. right now who have AstraZeneca vaccine. We are not the only people that are using mix and match schedules whether that is Moderna Pfizer or AstraZeneca Moderna Pfizer. So these are things that are being worked out. There is no consistency in countries now and I know there was acceptance and then not acceptance things are changing. So people need to be patient. There will I expect to be a need to have an international travel vaccine passport and we are working with Canada to make sure that people in B.C. will have the right information and be able to do that right now. If you are coming back into Canada that is in the arrive can app but we are working to make it and we have very little influence about what other countries or cruise ships require right now but it is very much in flux and I just implore people to be patient because I do expect that as more information becomes available about how safe but how effective the different schedules are countries will be adjusting to accept those schedules. So there are downsides as well. We know that there is an increased chance of having adverse reaction after having more doses particularly if they are closer together. So there is right now no need for people to get a third dose. We need to watch as things evolve over the next few weeks and months to have a better understanding of the effectiveness of the different vaccine schedules. One of the things that is a challenge is that it takes time for the data that has been accumulated to be published and that has been a critique that some people have said that there is no data to support mixing and matching. There is the vaccine effectiveness information that we are following on a daily basis both here in BC and across Canada around the world so that we know that these mixtures of vaccines work and they work well but it takes time for that to get into the scientific literature and that is what will I think make the difference in terms of countries accepting different vaccine combinations. Rob, did you have a follow-up? Sure, thanks. I realize it is going to take time but there is around 400,000 British Columbians with mixed vaccines and I am wondering if you are worried that whenever the United States allows vaccinated Canadians to cross the border and we are already in Canada making moves and those 400,000 British Columbians are going to be recognized until this is all sorted out and if that is the case is there any plan for them to help them if this takes time and they are stuck discriminated against based on the vaccine brand that they were injected with? The short answer is I have full confidence that the United States will be looking at the same things that we are looking at about the effectiveness of vaccine programs and in the same way to deny access to millions of people from the UK they are not going to prevent people from Canada entering the U.S. when they are ready to do that as well. We can't foreshadow what other countries are going to do but we can try and influence it and we are working with Canada to do that. That is all the time we have for today. Thank you everyone for joining. We will be back with some t-shirts.