 Good afternoon, I'm Dr Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer, and I'm very grateful to be here today on the traditional and unceded territories of the people, particularly the Esquimalt and Songhi's First Nations. And I'm here to give you the update on where we are with COVID-19 here in British Columbia. We have another 35 new COVID-19 positive cases in British Columbia today, bringing our total number of people to 1,445 people. That includes 642 people in the Vancouver Coastal area, 558 in the Fraser Health area, 884 on Vancouver Island health region, 135 in the Interior Health region, and 26 in the Northern Health area. We have no new long-term care facility outbreaks. There are 2,000 people in the Vancouver Coastal area. We have a number of people in the facility outbreaks. There are continued to be 20 with active cases. And we are up to 246 cases in long-term care or assisted living, including 153 residents and 93 staff. And unfortunately, we have an additional three deaths, bringing our total to 58 people who have lost their lives to COVID-19. And as always, our thoughts are with their families, their caregivers, and all of us who are affected not only by people who have died from COVID-19, but those who have died during a time when it's been a very much a challenge to come together and celebrate people's lives as we've had in the past. We also have a note break as we reported a week or so ago at a federal correctional facility and mission. And we have been working very closely with our federal counterparts to ensure that they have everything they need to manage that outbreak. There are a number of both inmates and staff who have been affected. And the total positive cases are up to 26 from that facility. Those are included in the numbers that we report for British Columbia. And as of yesterday, there were five people from the mission facility hospitalized in BC. So we have a number of people who have died from COVID-19. We continue to work very closely, particularly Fraser Health and the BC CDC in supporting our corrections partners in managing the challenging outbreak in that facility. Currently, we have 134 people hospitalized for COVID-19 in British Columbia. And of those, 63 are in critical care or in ICU. We also have 905 people now who have fully recovered from COVID-19. On this long weekend, we have been providing messages about the need for us all to stay home. This is not a time to be going traveling, even if it's to a summer home or cottage. We hope that everybody is off enjoying their weekend, spending time with their close family, with their households, and taking the time to unwind and to be kind to each other. I sincerely hope that most people have avoided any unnecessary travel. All across the province, we know these physical distancing measures are in place, and we know they are so important to be able to continue the trend that we are having in managing this pandemic. So I want to say thank you for staying home and avoiding putting unnecessary strain on our small communities around the province. And we want to make sure that we are not taking services and support away from those who live locally and need it. It is so important to keep going with everything that we are doing right now. The other thing I want to report on is that we have implemented our new returning traveler protocols at the international borders in British Columbia as of yesterday. So the requirement for an approved self-isolation plan is to make sure that we are all returning travelers. This is more about how we can support our fellow British Columbians and Canadians returning from other parts of the world right now, and making sure that they join us in our response to managing this pandemic and keeping our families and our communities safe here in British Columbia. I want to say thank you as well to the many volunteers who are working with us to make sure that we are not going to have to crossings in the past couple of days. And also to our federal partners and the Canadian border service agency, the quarantine service, we are all working on this together to do the best that we can to make sure we are protecting our communities and our families here in BC. So this is a long weekend. It is a weekend where there are many reflections and religious messages that connect to your family, your community in virtual ways and keep the physical distance between us. Let's show that kindness and care to each other by staying home and being safe. And let's all of us take this time to be kind, to be calm, and to be safe. Thank you and I'm happy to take questions. Okay. So this is a reminder to everybody on the line, please press star one to enter the room. Please unmute your phones. You will not be audible until we call your name. First question today is from Blonde Palmer with the province. Go ahead. Good day, Dr. Henry. A couple of questions. I think on the same topic. You've discussed before the challenge of developing a serology report and that there isn't one yet. And I'm wondering is the fact that we don't have one, one that the controls and rules and orders can be relaxed? And on the same idea, could you comment, please, on this report out of South Korea that some people who were thought to have recovered a care to have reacquired the virus? Sure. So there's a couple of things. Obviously, serology is something that we're looking forward to because it does help us understand retrospectively what's been done and what's not. And there's a lot of work being done on that. The VCCDC is working with our national microbiology lab even as we speak. And so I do expect that we will have a serology test that we'll be able to use very soon within the next few weeks. And it is one of the measures that we will be, that is helpful to us in trying to understand what are the things that will help us. And we've been putting the building blocks in place for helping us use a serology test when we get one that is reliable and has been validated. And so I do think that will be coming quite soon. In terms of the report out of Korea, I think in the scientific discussion of that, it's really unclear. It's unclear whether it is people starting to shed the virus again, or with other viral infections, whether they are able to pass it on, whether it's live virus that they can pass on to others, still not clear. It does not appear to be. Whether it's a reactivation or whether it's a test issue, because some of the tests that we have can be falsely positive or falsely negative, or it may be picking up just more shedding of a virus that's no longer live. And there's an ongoing discussion about that. It does not appear that that is driving an increase in infections in the community, but obviously we're watching that carefully to try and better understand what it means in the grand scheme of things. Next question is from John Hernandez, CBC. Earlier this week you did revive people to stay close to home over the long weekend, but we've seen people lining up, taking care of their families. What are your overall thoughts about this as we are in the midst of this long weekend? Well, we still say, if you don't have a reason to go, then don't go. Stay home, stay close to home. We know most people are doing that. There are many reasons why people may need to travel, whether it's for family, for being able to check up on people that they have not had the ability to do that before. We did actually talk with BC ferries to get a sense of whether some of the perhaps more overblown reports are out there, and they do report that, for one, the ferries are only allowed to carry 50% of capacity, and we know that the schedule has been dramatically reduced, and they did confirm that they're only seeing a fraction of the traffic that they would normally on this weekend. So I am heartened that I think most people are doing what we need to do. And they're staying home, they're looking after their family, they're taking care of their neighbors, they're managing this challenging time, staying close to home, and staying a safe distance from others. Hi, Dr Henry, just wondering, we're hearing reports from Ontario and pretty concerning reports from Quebec on shortages of staff in some long-term care homes, although the one in Quebec was actually staff apparently abandoning the care home, so I hope that's not happening here, but with the order that became official yesterday, is there a possibility that staffing levels at some facilities here may drop off, and is there a contingency plan for that circumstance? Absolutely, and that's one of the reasons why it's been some time, it is a long-term care facility. And I think it's very challenging. And early on when we had our first long-term care facility outbreaks, particularly Lynn Valley, there was a lot of concern about staff, and we went to great lengths to get people to step up and to work in those facilities. I think it has a lot to do with our own innate fear and our concern and the anxiety and trauma, really, when you're caring for older people, you know, our elders and seniors in an outbreak like this, when so many of them are being affected by this disease, and how challenging that is for us as healthcare workers to be in that environment. We've not seen staffing shortages, and we've been working very carefully to try and support staff so that they can continue to come into work. We've had a number, a large number, and I don't have the exact figure off the top of my head, but of nurses and carer aides who stepped up and volunteered to assist in the long-term care facility outbreaks that we've had, and, you know, we're incredibly grateful for that, and appreciative that people are doing their best to support our seniors and our elders during this very challenging time. Mary Griffin, check news. Hi, Dr. Henry. Thanks very much for this. Last week about how the testing numbers will increase in the near futures, and that doctors will be able to test more broadly. I'm just wondering what that actually means, like will you be targeting people who have interactions with members of the public out in the community, for example, such as in the grocery store sort of thing? And one other thing I was wondering is the percentage of people contracting is going to be a few more women. And in the other steps that I've seen, the deaths are more men or dietists, lighter, higher percentage. Yeah. So a couple of things. The testing strategy is for people who are sick in the community. So, yes, we're going back to similar to where we were several weeks ago where we can focus more broadly on people in our community who are getting sick to try and pick up clusters again. As you know, the people returning travelers are what we focused on also early on, and there's much, much reduced traffic returning. But that is also a place that we'll be focusing. And essential workers have always been part of the strategy. So it really is up to the clinical judgment of the physician. One of the things that we are seeing is that we're seeing a lot of people coming off, much fewer people are showing up with the respiratory illnesses across the province. And those who have it are much more likely to be something like COVID. So early on, our positivity rates, so for every 100 people who were tested, one of them was positive for COVID-19. And about 20 of them for the last couple of weeks were positive for influenza or other viruses, but we're seeing a lot of people coming up here as it tends to this time of year. So we're targeting again, trying to make sure that we're catching everybody in our community, but particularly where we see clusters or outbreaks or risk for people impacting on our health care system. So the testing has gone up a bit, but we're also seeing fewer people who are getting sick. So that's reassuring in some ways, but in terms of the deaths, what it is between men and women, the reflection of the cases who are sick with COVID-19 being a higher proportion of younger women reflects that there's a lot of health care workers who are in that number, many of whom had quite mild illness. But the data will be updated on the BCCDC website, and it does give you the breakdown of male and female in that. I do recognize that around the world we're seeing a slightly increased number of men who are dying from this or hospitalized from this, and nobody is entirely sure why that is. Next we have Matt Pre-Proof, Alaska Highway news. Go ahead, Matt. Good morning, Dr. Happy Easter, and thank you for taking the question today. Over the last several days now you've reported no new care home outbreaks in the region, and that a care home worker here in Fort St. John has tested positive for COVID and is in hospital in Prince George. The worker is a member of the Blue Berry First Nation, and that First Nation is now on lockdown. There's a lot of concern here in Fort St. John and the peace that there was no public notice about this. We were only informed by the family. Northern Health says the incubation period in this particular case has passed, and residents at Peace Villa are still at home. We're not getting information about how many residents here are being tested, how many of our front line health workers are being tested for this virus. On top of this we're now being told that there are some care home workers here in the north that are working still at multiple facilities even across the border into Alberta. I'm just wondering if you can kind of square the circle and explain to the people here in Northeast BC what's happening at Peace Villa and what's going on with the people of care home workers and the transmission of this virus in our care homes? Yes. So Northern Health is working very closely with the First Nations health authority, and individual cases we will not, and I will not, and I continue to not report on personal health information for individuals, and, you know, if the family decided they wanted to release information about one of their family members, and that is what we can do, of course. I know Northern Health is very involved in ensuring that all of the long-term care homes in the north have the appropriate protocols in place to protect our residents and our healthcare workers as well. I know that the single-site order, as we said, our primary focus was on the lower mainland, and so that's where it started to roll out first, and I know that we're working on it in Northern Health as well, but it takes time for those things, as we just talked about, we want to make sure that there are no facilities left short in the assigning of people, and so it has to be done in a thoughtful and deliberate way. Next question is from Megan Devlin, Daily High. Hi, Dr Bonnie Henry. We're just wondering at what point you might consider stepping up enforcement of that advice not to be a part of it, and we are looking at what is happening, where things are popping up in different communities, and monitoring what's happening in our communities around the province, and I know that most people are doing the right thing, and there are many reasons why people may need to travel, as I've said, some of them are very legitimate reasons, so I don't believe that there's a need for stepped-up enforcement or lockdowns or any of those types of measures that people call them. We are doing it here in BC, and it's thanks to everybody doing their part, and it's not too late for those people who thought it might be a good idea, and they're realizing that, you know, we are very serious about this, and we need to continue to do this to support our communities and our families and keep them safe. It's not too late to join our cause and to do our part of the solution as well. The things I mentioned a couple of days ago, that what happens this weekend is going to be reflected in what we see in the coming weeks, and we do not want to see increasing numbers of cases, increasing challenges in our health care system. That is what we are doing everything here in BC to avoid, and I know the vast majority of people are on our side on this and are holding the line, and I thank you for that. Keith Baldwin, Global News. Keith, are you there? Go ahead. A couple of weeks ago you talked about the change in the use of ventilators, putting people on ventilators early, because that had better outcomes. I'm just seeing some reports from physicians in England talking about some changes there of the use of ventilators. I'm just wondering if there's any change in protocols or the use of ventilators. There are other things that have come out, some things from Italy as well around the types of disease that they're seeing and some groups of people there from the UK. We do have a critical care working group which is the physicians in the province who are monitoring all of this, who are much more in tune with all the nuance of the critical care work and what we're seeing here in BC, and they're doing basis to make sure that we're up to date with the latest. As far as I'm aware, they're still finding that people are doing better and that's been borne out in other parts of the world as well, but we are seeing as more people are being infected, we do see that there's many different manifestations of this disease and we're starting to see that some people have more neurological issues, especially even after recovery may have ongoing symptoms of the brain and some people, so I know that the critical care doctors are monitoring this carefully. Wendy, are you there? Okay, moving on to Lisa Hain, CTV. No, Lisa, Bethlehem Miriam, News 1130. Hi, Dr. Henry. Some parts of the beaches are closed to the public, but not all of them and as we start to see warmer and warmer weather, people are still going out to these spaces. At what point do you think it's necessary to close all of these spaces down? You know what, I'm actually really heartened, I think it's important for us to get out, to be with our family or our households and to experience the fresh air. It's important during a time like this when we have so much anxiety, people are cooped up, particularly children to have those opportunities to go outside and what I'm seeing as well is people are really good about it. They're keeping their distance, they're keeping their space from people. Part of the reason the provincial parks were closed, as we know, is because of some of the facilities and the challenges that could be around people camping and not being able to maintain those distances. I will also say that one of the main reasons that many of the provincial parks were closed is because of our concern about the wildfire season. It has been a dry few weeks and that's also a primary concern. We want to make sure that we don't have additional issues to deal with across the province. So there's a variety of reasons why some of the parks were closed. Some of the other things that I'm seeing that make a lot of sense are reducing vehicle traffic so that there's more space for pedestrians or people on bicycles, having things go in one way or the other. So I think we're at a fine balance and we're doing the best that we can to make sure that people for their mental and physical health are being able to be outside but to keep those safe distances. That's incredibly important. CHAD POSEN, CBC. Thank you for taking the question. You alluded to it earlier about some of the ages of positive tests. Can you address a little bit more about some of the demographic that we're seeing or people under the age of 49 and what could be done to maybe message or address that younger age for some of those cases? So we've had very few cases under the age of 19, which is good, as we've seen around the world. Children, particularly young children, are relatively spared from this, which is a good news thing. Almost all of our deaths, unfortunately, are in elder people. With the one exception of a young man in his 40s, unfortunately. So we have seen a shift to over 70, over 80, and even a number of deaths of people in their 90s. But the bulk of our cases, people who have become sick with this, are actually in the 20 to 39, 40 age group. And that reflects as well that there's a lot of healthcare workers who have been tested and who have had serious illness. Many of them have had very mild illness, but a number of them have been hospitalized. And I say it again, people in their 20s and 30s are not immune to having severe illness with this. And we've seen that in testimony from people around the world where you can have a very severe pneumonia, you may end up in hospital, but even if you're not in hospital, it is a disease that really wipes people out. And that's why it is so important for all of us to maintain those safe distances, to do the things that we know work to prevent transmission, which includes cleaning our hands regularly, covering our mouth when we cough, staying away from others, and staying in if you're sick yourself. Ashley Wadwani, Black Press. Hi, Dr. Wadwani Henning. So as we know, long-standing social and economic inequities have made Indigenous people more at risk of a disease, and I know you won't speak to specific locations of confirmed cases, but can you confirm if the Blueberry River First Nation is the only case on a First Nation reserve in BC at this time? And can you maybe speak to any measures you meet to Indigenous populations when it comes to combating this virus, specifically around trauma-informed care? Yeah, absolutely. We've been working, as we've talked about from the very beginning, with the Health Authority, with Dr. Danielle Bainsmith in my office, who's our Deputy Provincial Health Officer for Indigenous Health and Wellness, and with many partners across the province to ensure that we have a culturally safe way of addressing the needs and the concerns within First Nations communities, and particularly the importance of elders as keepers of culture and language in many communities, in First Nations communities around the province, and how important that is. So the work that we've been doing has focused on being able to support First Nations communities in their own measures that they want to take and need to take based on their governance, and being able to support them in doing what they feel needs to be done, but also having a rapid response capability to be able to support testing and management should cases arise in First Nations communities. The other really important, and that may involve things like making sure testing is there, making sure we can support people to isolate if need be, and we know that in many communities that's a very much a challenge where there's a large number of people in homes in some cases, and so there are contingency plans and plans being put in so that people in some cases remove elders from a situation to protect them in other cases to ensure that anybody who is ill can be isolated appropriately. So there's ongoing work around those plans, and there's been funding put in to support that. As well, we've been working in people, indigenous people who are living away from home, so that they can be safe in places like the downtown East side in some cases, and so that they can remain connected to their communities, but don't always need to physically go back to their communities. They can be safely cared for, safely supported in the community that they're in as well. So it's been very much a focus of ours, and we're continuing to do some work in that area. Next question is from Lisa Cordasco, E-H-L-Y, go ahead, Lisa. Thank you, good afternoon, Dr. Henry, I'm wondering if you can speak a little to the situation at Mission. Namely, how does it compare to outbreaks you've been tracking at long-term care homes, and also, do you have any thoughts as to why the outbreak at the provincial institution in the Okanagan has been contained to one, but in Mission, we've gone from two cases last Saturday to now 26 in a single week. Does that speak to the ability of institutions to be able to self- isolate people? I think it's a slightly different situation in that from my understanding and discussions around what was going on at Mission, that there had been quite a lot of transmission before it was recognized. So the protocols that were put in place in the provincial correctional facility were able to identify somebody very early, and that has helped us. And all of our, it's the same analogy for our long-term care homes. We're able to catch it early, particularly if it's a worker versus a resident. The chances of transmission happening to others in that area go down dramatically. So the process in place, it just, sometimes it's very challenging as we know people can have very mild illness or have or not recognize that they're ill for a couple of days, and depending on what their role is in a facility, they can have a mild illness or a mildly. So we are continuing to work with the correctional facility in the Okanagan as well, and people are being monitored. The way the facility was set up enabled people to be isolated in different groups. I know it's a more challenging situation in Mission, and we are in the middle of the incubation period in both those cases. So it is very likely or probability that there may be more people who show transmission and control pieces are in place in both of those places now. So it's a little bit more watching and seeing what's happening and making sure that we are not transmitting, not have opportunities for more people to transmit for the next chain, the next generation of cases. So Fraser Health will be actively working with Mission, and it's very challenging, and we see that in long-term care as there has been a number of cases and there's been ongoing exposures, it's very challenging to manage, and that's what we're seeing in the Mission site as well. Next we have Rachel Haynes, CTV. Hi, Dr. Henry. There were delays that were reported today after China began some additional inspections on the exploding medical supplies, and I'd just like to know what is the situation like in BC when it comes to additional protective equipment, other medical supplies, and do you think that the federal government needs to step in more so there is more of a coordinated effort? There is very much a coordinated effort, and we were on calls even yesterday, lengthy calls, making sure that we have all of these things coordinated. So I think we're in a reasonable place, I won't ever say good at this point because we know there's continuing to be a lot of things that could get supplies that were needed in over the past week, and we've started some, and this is where I think it's really helpful for the future, both Canada and here in BC, we started a domestic production of certain things like gowns, for example, which were a challenge, so those things are starting as well, and that will help us in the future. We have been, you know, we're in a difficult situation that we need, but we are continuing to get what we need for the future and making sure that we are supporting across the country right now. The biggest challenge is in Ontario and particularly in Quebec, and so I know Alberta was able to provide some needed PPE to Quebec over the last couple of days. We're not in the place where we have enough to share. We still need what we have to manage here, and we need good coordination happening across the country to make sure that we can make sure everybody has what they need, and that if hotspots arise, equipment comes. Next question is from Bob Mackin, the breaker news, go ahead. Hi, I'm looking at the stats for testing, and I'm seeing that in recent days it's been about 1,000 tests per day, even though we've been told there's been capacity in the 3,000 to 3,500 range, it looks like on the graph that there's only been one day that testing actually broke the 3,000 mark. Why is there such a gap between the amount of tests that are actually being sampled and the amount of capacity? Why isn't BC using the full capacity for its testing? Part of that is what I was talking about earlier. We have been targeting our testing. We've also been doing surveillance testing, and we've been trying to make sure that anybody in the province sends in for testing for any respiratory virus automatically as tested for COVID as well. And we also have been, as you know, targeting healthcare workers, our outbreaks, and our percentage positive has been going up, which tells us that we are finding the people that we need to find. One of the main reasons why our capacity has increased across the province, which is great, one of the main reasons why we have a lot of increased testing is because we are seeing fewer people with respiratory illness that are being sent for testing. So that is, you know, a balancing. I expect that we'll continue to increase the amount of testing that is being done. But we know that there's fewer people coming back from other countries, and that was a large part of where illness was arising, and that there's fewer people with respiratory illness, with signs and symptoms that could be related to this. We are continuing to test widely in our long-term care facility outbreaks, and with a very, very sensitive, so you don't have to, for older people, we know that they can have very mild. One wouldn't even call them symptoms. Sometimes it can be just an increase in fatigue or lack of appetite, for example. So we are testing very actively in those settings and in our outbreak settings as well. But we've seen a decrease in healthcare workers, for example, who are becoming ill. So that's partly a good thing, and it's partly a reflection of the amount of respiratory illness that's in our community right now. Next question is from Mark Antoine, CBC Radio Canada. Next, Johan. Excuse me, sorry. Go ahead. Hello. Mark, are you there? Yes, I'm going up here. So, Dr. Henry, I was just wanting to know province of Quebec has not excluded students to physically go back to school before May 4th. They said that during their presser yesterday. Is this a scenario that could be considered in BC? And if so, what would be kind of the timeline for such a return to classrooms? Yes. So that is one of the key questions that we are looking at, that the evidence around the role of children in potential transmission and how can we ensure that we don't get increased transmission of an illness if large numbers of children are back together. So we have been considering how could we have classrooms, physical classrooms come back together in a way that protects children and protects the staff and the students, the teachers, the early childhood educators within the educational setting, the classroom setting. So that is something we are looking at. I actually believe that we need to continue with, particularly for the next few weeks, continuing with the virtual classrooms for most children, although it is incredibly important for the children of our health care workers and other essential workers to be able to get some, to have the classroom education in a safe way, as well as we know that children who are more disadvantaged, who are falling behind when they have gaps like this, they are not as able to catch up. So we want to make sure that our system is doing everything it can to support those children. So those are the considerations that we have. I am not going to put a date on it because it really depends on how things manage over the next two weeks. I am not going to put a date on what that might look like. There is still going to be things like physical distancing, things like hand washing that are not going to change. So how do we do that in the best possible way in our classroom settings is one of the questions that we will be answering over the next few weeks. We have time for one more question this afternoon. As a reminder, for any reporters that didn't get to ask a question today, there will be a statement released on the 12th of August. Please visit bccbc.ca for non-medical questions about the province's COVID-19 response. Visit gov.bc.ca forward slash COVID-19 and for a full listing of the provincial health officer's orders, visit gov.bc.ca forward slash pho guidance. And our last question today comes from Nick Johansson with Castanet. Go ahead, Nick. Hi, Dr. Henry, can you provide an update on the two outbreaks here in the Okanagan, the violence nurseries, just the number of confirmed cases at this point and how many tests have been done at these two separate outbreaks? As far as I'm aware, and I should have got some details on that, sorry, I know there's been quite a bit of testing done in both situations, you know what, I'll have to get you the numbers offline. As far as I'm aware, there's still the two positive cases at the correctional facility. And I believe we're up to 19 in the nursery. I know that there's still, within the incubation period, and people are being isolated. I do want to say, you know, a great thank you to West Kelowna. I know there are people who are supporting both the family and the temporary foreign workers who are working there and who are in quarantine and isolation and who have been part of this outbreak there. And I know the community rallied and that's what we do in BC, to support people through this, and thank you very much for that. That's all the time we have for today. Thank you.