 Good afternoon. I'm Adrian Dix, BC Minister of Health. To my right is Dr Bonnie Henry, BC's Provincial Health Officer. I want to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Laquan speaking people of the Songhees and the Esquimalt First Nations. Tomorrow Dr Henry will be briefing here in Victoria at noon. And then on Monday the briefing will take place at 1.30 and we will have more information about the rest of next week on Monday. And with that I would like to introduce Dr Bonnie Henry. Thank you. Good afternoon. For our case update today, we have 53 new test positive cases in British Columbia making our total number of cases who have tested positive in the province 1,174. That includes 541 who are in the Vancouver Coastal Health Region, 412 who are in the Vancouver Coastal Health Region, 412 who are in the Vancouver Coastal Health Region, 412 who are in the Vancouver Coastal Health Region, 412 in the Fraser Health Region, 74 on Vancouver Island Health Region, 126 in the Interior Health Region and 21 now in the Northern Health Region. In addition, we have one more additional long-term care home outbreak to report today to bring our total of outbreaks in long-term care to 22. That includes a total of 176 people who have tested positive in the province. And with that I would like to share with you the number of 176 of our cases and really reflects the difficulty that we have in outbreaks in long-term care. I think, though, that we are heartened by the fact that the recent ones have been identified with a single staff person or a single resident has been testing positive for the disease. And we know that both in Vancouver Coastal and in Fraser Health they have now very active outbreak teams for long-term care. And the measures that we have been putting in place in long-term care and assisted living means that these are being identified very early and we are able to control them. So the vast majority of the cases unfortunately are related to two of the earlier outbreaks at the Lynn Valley Care Centre and at Harrow Park. The slightly positive good news today is our hospitalizations have gone down slightly to 146 people who are currently in hospital. And of those 64 are currently in the critical care units or ICU. On the more sad note we have had an increase in deaths once again with four more people who have succumbed to this disease and again related to three of them were related to the outbreaks at Harrow Park or Lynn Valley. And our condolences of course and our thoughts go out to the family members and the care providers for those people. We now have 641 people who have completely recovered from this disease. I wanted to talk a little bit to some of the young people who may or may not be watching. But I was talking with some of the youth in my life and I recognize that this is a very challenging time for teenagers in particular to be stuck home with your families maybe, to not have those social interactions that you are used to having with your friends at schools. And the uncertainty about what is going to happen in the next few months particularly for those who are finishing high school, you know, the challenges about what is going to be happening about university, about jobs in the future and I know that can be very challenging for young people and very challenging for all of us to know how to deal with and I just want to say that this is extraordinary and you need to be comfortable in reaching out and find those trusted adults in your life. Don't be afraid to talk to them about what is going on, about your anxiety, about your concerns and these are opportunities for us to work together with the young people in our life to look up things, to find a trusted source of information, to try and put some normalcy, to address some of the concerns that young people have. We can do that in a way that supports them through this really difficult time. And you can tell by the numbers that we have, the people who are in hospital, the fact that this disease is being seen across our province, that the risk remains high for everyone here in British Columbia. We are in the middle of it. We are in the thick of things right now and we see that with our colleagues in across the United States. And in our neighbors in Alberta. This is our time to hold the line. We must be unwavering in our commitment to keep our firewall up here in BC, to keep it strong and to flatten our curve. People have gone to extraordinary efforts and made sacrifices to protect their families, to protect our elders and seniors, to protect our health care workers and our health care system in our communities here in BC. We must continue to do those basic things, to clean our hands regularly, to stay home if we can as much as possible, to stay apart with our physical distancing, to have that safe distance between us and those particularly our loved ones and our elders who might have severe disease if they get infected. To self-isolate if we are a traveller or if we are ill, to make sure that we are not passing this time and to stay connected in doing that, to say socially connected, to find those ways of reaching out to each other and supporting each other while maintaining that safe distance. I also want to talk to travellers who are coming back and we know that there will be more Canadians coming back and people coming back to BC from other parts of the world where this disease is causing havoc in some cases. We must support them and you must know that we need to immediately self-isolate for 14 days. That's how we protect our families, that's how we protect our communities. And that is without question and without exception. And if you have a loved one, a family member or somebody in your community that is coming home, we need to do what we can to support them so that we are all in this together. We can drop off groceries, we can have groceries and video games with them. We have to have a united focus for the next while. We need to tow this line together. We need to keep our firewall strong in our communities across the province so that we can all be proud knowing that we have done the right thing. And we are holding the line for our families and our communities. Thank you very much, Dr. Henry. I want to share Dr. Henry's condolences to the families of the four people who have passed away today. The 35 people who have passed away from COVID-19 in British Columbia. Our hearts go out to you on what is obviously a very, very difficult day. I want to say the results today are what we have been reporting every day, which is the detailed results of what is happening in our acute care hospitals, what is happening in long-term care, what is happening in ICU and what is happening in terms of cases throughout the province. There are currently 146 people in acute care hospitals who have tested positive for COVID-19 as we speak. That is down two from yesterday. 63 of those are in Fraser Health, 57 in Vancouver Coastal Health, 12 in Interior Health, 10 in Island Health and four in Northern Health. 4,399 empty acute care beds in BC today. That is 59% of the total number of beds are occupied. So that is 41 not occupied, put it out in context and that obviously reflects the efforts that have been made to move people from hospital and to cancel elective surgeries and I will be speaking about that a little more in a second. 54.3% of our critical care beds are currently occupied in BC. And the number of emergency room visits yesterday was 3,117. That compares to 6,559. Back three weeks ago on March 10th. As we noted, there are 64 people in ICU and to some degree the slight change in numbers reflects that. Let's say a few things again about PPE. We heard days ago that there are 64 people in ICU and to some degree the slight change in numbers reflects the challenges that we face today. We heard disappointing news from the United States today. Although it is not surprising it reflects the challenges we faced with the United States as a source of PPE and other health equipment in recent weeks. We strongly support the efforts of the government of Canada to protect Canada's interests and ensure supplies to PPE in Canada. And just note that we live in communities that are linked. We have a lot of work to do in Canada of having one country of the world who undoubtedly, our friends in the United States, are undoubtedly dealing with an extraordinary situation right now but having significant control itself over the supply chain. That said, I would note that raw materials that are involved here also come from Canada. We live in a community that strongly linked together and we hope that Canada will continue to work together with the government of Canada, the government of British Columbia and of the community to get adequate PPE, to get adequate numbers of masks here in BC. The government of Canada has had some successes recently and we are heartened by that and we believe we are working hard and we will have success ourselves. That redoubles those efforts and secondly, it underlines why we need to ensure the number of updated numbers on surgeries that have been cancelled and this is between March 17th and April 2nd. I think this number in the coming period may well be higher. The number of surgeries cancelled in BC in this period, elective surgeries, they are called, or scheduled surgeries, all of them medically necessary surgeries, I want to underline that 11,276 surgeries have been cancelled and I want to say this, those are HIPAA and just to give you a small breakdown, 1,208 of those are HIPAA knee replacements, 240 are dental surgeries which are essential surgeries if they are required in the acute care setting and 7,801 are other surgeries. I just want to say to people who are in need of surgeries, you are still on the list that we are committed to getting back to these procedures. I know everyone involved in surgical care in the hospital, the physicians, the nurses, everyone involved is committed to doing that and ensuring we have access in the future. We are going to commit to supporting you just as we need to support right now the fight against COVID-19. I want to note, this may be of interest people that earlier this month, the Fraser Health Authority has an agreement with the Falls Creek surgical center consistent with the Canada Health Act and we do about 16,000 health insurance surgeries, in other words, 100% paid for by the public health care system in private surgical facilities and this will give us even more flexibility as we respond to increasing weight lists after we hope are able to resume normal practice in terms of elective surgeries. I want to say with respect to the numbers today that we are continuing to work very hard and there is some good news and some very challenging news in those numbers and on a day when people have passed away, it is very hard to think of good news but the slight reduction in the number of people in hospital is that way but it has to tell us that we have to double down on our activities and we cannot allow new circumstances to get in the way of what Dr Henry and the whole team of people in every corner of BC and the 5 million participants on that team, the people who live in BC are doing right now and that is why we are continuing to work with the federal government to press them to ensure that when people come to British Columbia, come to Canada from outside of the country, that the quarantine act measures are put in place effectively. Those efforts are continuing, we are working hard on that question. It would not be acceptable for us to deal with what is already a fundamentally important issue and have our success undermined because we didn't take the proper action at this crucial time in the process. And finally I want to thank in particular today as we do, trying to do every day. First of all, the people at 811, because the average response time yesterday was under a minute at 811 and that reflects their extraordinary work. I want to thank all health care workers. I want to note that there has been some consequence of the measures we have taken on parking, the free parking, and some facilities that have caused some difficulties. I just want to say that we are working on those problems and just to say to people who are not eligible to park in those facilities that they shouldn't do so. As you know, one of the challenges and having worked on the hospital parking issue a little bit over the last year or two, I can tell you one of the challenges with free parking has always been to fewer people coming to the hospital and so we are working on those issues, we hear the concerns, particularly at hospitals such as Royal Columbian where there was a long wait list to get a parking space and those causes and difficulties that we are working hard and we will be enforcing, even though parking may be free, it is our intention to ensure that everybody who parks, everybody who parks, does so with legitimate reason, meaning that they are a patient, meaning potentially in a limited circumstance available now they are visiting. I want to thank the staff of the Ministry of Health who every day are working their guts out. The people who work here in the Ministry of Health in Victoria on Blanchard Street and across British Columbia have been doing unbelievable amounts of overtime every day working hard, sometimes from home, sometimes in office but are doing exemplary and extraordinary work I am very proud of them. I think they are an exceptional group of people, they provide enormous support to Dr. Henry and to our Deputy Minister Steve Brown and I am very proud of the work that they do. Dr. Henry has said this is our flattening of our curve but we can't take the foot off the pedal yet. It is our flattening, it is our curve, this is our fight in British Columbia, our BC effort and this is our time and our moment, we have to continue to push now, these weeks are critically important to all of us. We need all of you, everyone who can hear us, to be messengers for this, to learn from the BC CDC if more needs to be learned on their website, what to say to our friends and family and ensure you are messengers for the measures that have been taken, the orders of Dr. Henry and the advice of Dr. Henry has put forward and so many others have put forward in BC. We can be all messengers of this, and all in, we all have to ensure that these orders are supported and followed 100%. If we do that, we can continue our efforts to restrain the growth of COVID-19 in BC. Thank you and we are happy to take your questions. Thank you very much. Oh, in French, that's good. That's true. We are announcing today 50 new cases for a total of 1,164 cases in the British Columbia. Each health system in the British Columbia accounts for patients with COVID-19. 541 cases are found in Vancouver Coastal, 412 cases in Fraser, 64 cases in Vancouver, 126 cases in the interior and 21 cases in the north. There were 35 deaths. The COVID-19 in the British Columbia included 4 on the last day. We are sad to announce these 4 cases in the health system in Vancouver Coastal. We are giving our condolences to those who have lost their loved ones. There are now 22 establishments of long-term care and care for the autonomous life in the health system in Vancouver Coastal and Fraser, with a total combination of 164 cases of COVID-19. These are our most vulnerable citizens in the efforts to protect them and to be one of the main objectives of our health teams. Today, 673 people in the test of COVID-19 were positive. They have been resettled and no more than 10 Germans. In the total of 146 cases of COVID-19 are actually positive. We are very happy to be able to answer all of the cases of COVID-19. 146 people are actually hospitalized in care and intensive care. The other people attend the COVID-19 to be isolated. Thank you very much and we are happy to take your questions. As a reminder to everybody on the phone, please press star 1 to queue up. You are limited to one question and we ask that you unmute your phones. You will not be audible until we answer your first question. This afternoon is from Richard Zesman with global news. Thank you very much for taking my question. For Dr Henry, what is the message to private landlords who are upset that COVID-19 testing sites are being set up in clinics in their buildings? Well, I actually hadn't heard that there was concerns about that. I know there was some concerns early on when people didn't understand what we were doing. But I can reassure people that there are clinics that are being established by our health authorities that all of the safety precautions that are needed are being taken and that people shouldn't worry. I think as well we need to think about people who need to access their physician services and we know that a lot of people are concerned about going to their physician's office or going to the emergency room if they need it. But I want to emphasize how important it is for people who have been in the hospital for a long period of time to make sure they have an ongoing continuity of care with their clinicians. And many physicians now are doing that virtually or by phone. So I encourage people to contact their physician's office and make sure that you are getting the advice from your clinician that you need to make sure that your conditions are managed through this challenging time. Next question is from Georgie Smith, I alluded to this earlier, sorry, in the 90s the pulp and paper mill is providing pulp to make essential gowns and masks for American companies, every day workers are putting themselves at risk to make critical supplies but not for Canadians given that the U.S. is now limiting N95 mask exports to Canada, what can the BC government do to ensure our resources are being used for British Columbians? First of all, what we need to make sure is that we have the Prime Minister to support our political leaders in seeing that actions that don't make sense for Americans and don't make sense for Canadians are not pursued. And so I think we should make those efforts rather than contributing and making the problem worse and going tit for tat, we should work together for a result that will benefit all of us. Part of the reason we have challenges in British Columbia is that we need our American friends to do well. We want their response to COVID-19 to be effective and it needs to be effective. It's important for us that it be affected. So we need to work together and so I guess my message today is that we shouldn't respond with retaliation, we should respond with force, but we shouldn't respond with retaliation, we should respond by insisting that we should do a kind of parochial action such as this and the amazing work done by the workers at Harmack, for example, is an example of this, is not consistent with what we need to do as a society. I'm very proud of the workers at Harmack, the health care workers of Canada and I'm also very proud and admiring of the health care workers of the United States whose fate is depicted sometimes on your network and we've got what we need to do in British Columbia, but what we need to do is convince our American friends in the first instance that what they've done is what this action is wrong, it's wrong for them and wrong for us and let's try to move forward together so we're dealing with this problem. That's what we're going to do. In the meantime, our determination to get adequate masks and adequate PPE for our health care workers redoubles is not possible maybe for it to do so even more. People are working 24-7 on this. I'm proud that the government of Canada has made some progress on that this week, which is very helpful to us. We've been working closely with health ministers across the country on this and I can tell you that we are not going to stop until we get the tools and the protections that our health workers need. So the response I don't think to these actions is to respond based on the science, based on effectiveness and based on who we are as Canadians. Go ahead. Thank you. Does BC support its universities getting involved in COVID-19 testing? Is it working alongside with Health Canada to get those approvals? In terms of research, I know there has been some reports and yes, we are supporting some of the research that's going on in BC universities around development of tests, but they will all be validated through the process with Health Canada and it's being led through our BC CDC public health lab and the research team at the BC CDC that is connecting with researchers from around the province and actually around the world around a number of these projects. Next we have Lisa Kordasko from CHLY. Thank you. Yes. Could you please tell me what you've been hearing from your health authorities about the type and the number of non-compliance complaints you're getting and whether, I know there are calls on social media for, you know, imposing fines right now and getting, but by law officers can't do that. How far are you prepared to go at this point to enforce? Well, there's a couple of different areas of enforcement. So we get a lot of complaints that come in about people talking about their neighbors and they may or may not know the story about what is happening with somebody in their community. So that one is one that we address through discussion. And many times, some of the complaints are unwarranted. In terms of things like restaurant closures, the other orders that we have, those are much simpler and yes, we have compliance and enforcement regime of protocols that we've developed along with an increased number of compliance officers from around the province and we announced that earlier this week. So they are able to, our approach is first to make sure that people are aware of what the restrictions are and what the orders are and what they need to do to comply with them. But environmental health officers, medical health officers are able to issue fines if needed and they have issued orders in specific instances against people who are doing things or businesses who are doing things that are a health hazard or are contravening the orders. So we have not yet had to issue a fine for anybody for disobeying the orders. I will also say that there are the federal quarantine orders now apply to anybody who has come into the country recently and come into BC since last week. And those quarantine orders are enforceable by peace officers by the RCMP and the protocol is being worked out. But there are also fines that are able to be levied for people who are breaching the federal quarantine orders. Next we have a question from Jennifer Saltman with the Vancouver Sun. Hi, Minister Dix, you have talked about how there must be no ambiguity when it comes to British Columbians knowing what they have to do when they return from overseas. You said you are working with the federal government to make sure that measures are being effectively imposed. Can you be specific about what measures or enforcement you would like to see in place that aren't now? Clearly, there needs to be a much stronger capacity to do that. We should see no diminution, it seems to me, in the response that we have seen in previous returns of people, for example, from cruise ships. We have to have a vastly greater capacity to use the quarantine act which has been used in British Columbia but we need a much stronger capacity to do that. We need to actively follow up with cases. We need access to the full capacity of Canada and we need stronger action. It seems to me that we are the work that everybody is doing in British Columbia, the sacrifice that every citizen is making in this province. The leadership of the health system, the leadership of Dr. Henry has to be supported by action when people come from other countries to ensure that quarantine orders, that self-isolation for 14 days, which is a requirement of everyone, happens. That will require, in addition to all the things I have described in many cases, the support of the community because we need individuals where necessary to support by dropping off food so that when people come to airports, they don't go past and go to save on, they don't go to safeway, they don't go to Costco, they go home and they stay home. That is going to require a lot of action and support of those individuals to go through that in self-isolation, but it will also require a much stronger, robust presence at borders and at airports. Next question comes from Emanat Agahi, CTV. Hi, I just again wanted to kind of get an update and talk about physical distancing, especially in the city of Vancouver, you know, the most populated city. Just seeing in Toronto, I think it's a great opportunity to see the city of Vancouver and Toronto, the mayor there put in a by-law that's pretty black and white, finding people who are standing within two meters if they live together. And then we also see in Vancouver where the park board has mentioned that it has warned 1,400 people in the last two weeks for not following physical distancing rules. It's sort of clear that maybe 1,400 people aren't breaking these laws on purpose. Maybe there's some confusion there. And the mayor today in Vancouver said he is going to wait for directions from your office or, you know, Dr. Enick, if they need to go black and white or they need to do more. So just wondering what you think about the rule that is put in place in Toronto which is so black and white and what we have so far in BC and Vancouver where it's not that certain. I'm not sure there's any evidence that that type of a by-law is effective. It's very challenging for us to police something like that. You have to go up to somebody and ask them if they are. So I actually think that what we're doing is a reasonable approach. We know that this virus is mostly transmitted to those we are close with in an enclosed setting, so inside. So I am much more concerned about the people who are going to be in the safe space and having people over and mixing and then going off with others in mixing. So that's when we get these little chains of transmission is when you're spending some time with this group of people but some of them are with another group of people. Those are the things that transmit this virus. So that's what we have to focus on. We have to focus on what's transmitting this virus. When we're outside in a park, the risk of transmission is actually much less than when we're inside. So I don't want to spend a lot of time policing people outside. What we want to do is make sure that everybody knows why we're doing this and understands the risk. And I believe for the most part people do. We still see groups of young people but when I vote now, I see that they're being respectful and walking in a distance but they're still connecting. We're saying hello. People are recognizing each other and that's what we need to do to keep us going through this really challenging time. So I am appealing to everybody to do the right thing. And when we're outside, visibly outside, we need to stay apart from each other. But we also need to make sure that we're not having people who are in a position that can lead to us bringing it to our loved ones who may be older, the elders in our community, those of us who have underlying illness and may be susceptible to having severe illness with this. Next question comes from Ashley Wadwani from the Black Press. Go ahead. This would be a question I think for Minister Dick. Pharmacists are now allowed to restrict dispensing prescriptions to a 30-day supply. And other low-income people who regularly pay a one dispensing fee for a 90-day prescription, now having to pay obviously three times. This will mean increased costs for more dispensing fees. Is this something on the BC government's radar and are they planning to address it? The short answer is yes. The reason we are asking people to stick with the 30 days right now is because we know there are supply chain issues around the world and we want to make sure that everybody gets the medication they need. So even though you might usually get three months worth at a time, for this period of time, we are making sure that we have enough for everybody. And yes, we recognize that there were dispensing fees that would kick in if people had to go back three times instead of the 90-day prescription and we are addressing the number of people who are on fair farm care so that it will be taken care of for most people. Marcella Bernardo, news 1130. This is actually a question for the health ministry, you mentioned earlier about the parking situation at places like Royal Colombian Hospital and other places where now it is free. Here is your chance to be an Italian mayor and start telling people to start behaving themselves. What are you doing now to step forward in accessing it? Well, we wanted two sets of things. One is that there is a genuine challenge around parking. I think people have always asked these questions why don't you move more quickly on parking issues? We froze parking rates when we became Minister of Health and then we are reviewing those questions and I think it is fair to say I have learned more about parking than many other things in my life but I would say this about it, there are more health workers who apply for parking than have parking spaces at some health facilities and that is a challenge. Royal Colombian has a specific challenge which is that it is at a sky train station at braid so it is near a sky train station so it has some potential although there is not evidence right now that it is being used widely as some sort of park and ride site. We are going to be stepping up enforcement and there is going to be parking to be available for the staff at the hospital and for patients at the hospital. It is a very important thing. Many hospitals are running below capacity right now but obviously the reason why we have ensured that there is space available is to prepare for a much more serious situation later and we can't have a situation a week from now, two weeks from now where the stories that you have heard continue to happen so there will be more enforcement. People need to know that this is not an occasion. The decision to go to free parking was to support our health care workers and to support people who need to use hospital services right now and people I hope will respect that and I think overwhelmingly they are. There are some challenges, two hospitals in particular, Royal Colombian and St. Paul's and we are working through that with the Department of Health and we are going to make parking free on behalf in support of health care workers. There are some technical challenges and we have got to deal with that on the one hand with enforcement and I agree with you. It is unacceptable if people are misusing parking that has been made available for free on the one hand and the other is some organization to ensure that people get access to parking spaces and people aren't taking spaces that are not being made available for free on the one hand. Thank you. Doctor Henry, yesterday I think it was you spoke about some of the enhanced surveillance that is happening in prisons and other places where there is people in close quarters and I was wondering about oversight for and increase surveillance and what that entails in places like the downtown east side and also places where there are migrant workers. Yes, so a couple of things. There is a program that is run through public health in both those areas. So migrant workers in the interior for example when we are looking at the camps where we had the outbreak. But also there is a systematic program in the downtown east side and a few other places. One is to screen for symptoms. So if people have a change in their health status, if they have a new cough or a change in their health status, obviously a challenging situation with many people with underlying illnesses in that situation, that we have a rapid response team that is able to do testing if need be and to be able to monitor people in a more systematic way than we have in the past. So when they come into a shelter for example, being screened, asking them about how they are feeling, taking temperatures if need be. And that is where staff are being monitored every day where each resident is being monitored every day to see if they have developed a new symptoms that might be indicative of this. And part of it is of course having the available testing strategy so that we can detect it if it happens and a plan for what to do. So as soon as somebody is detected, they are able to be either removed from the area or isolated within the area. So that is where we are going to come back for example. Next question is from my ... I have had a request to restate the numbers. I guess there was an audio issue early on. So the case update for today, we have 53 test positive new cases in British Columbia which brings our total up to 1,174. And that includes 541 people in Vancouver Coastal Health, 412 in Vancouver, 74 cases on Vancouver Island. Health, 126 in the interior health region and 21 in northern health region. We have one additional long-term care home outbreak bringing that total to 22. Of these people, 146 people are hospitalized today in British Columbia. And of those 64 are in intensive care unit. Or in critical care areas. We have had unfortunately an increase of four deaths to bring our total number of people who have died from COVID-19 in BC to 35. In addition, we have 641 people who have now been cleared and are fully recovered. Good. Next question is from Mike Hager with the Global Mail. They don't ask about body count. Not the thrash metal band. But we have a lot of people who have died from COVID-19. Not the thrash metal band. But projected death totals. Ontario came out with their projected body count. And you guys have been reluctant so far to release that. Do you have a range of deaths that you have predicted? No. Okay. Next question is from Jeff Andreas, Radio NL. We do not predict it. We do not predict it. We do not predict it. Modeling is not to predict. Modeling gives you a sense of what could happen in different scenarios. And as we presented, the modeling we have done really is about how do we prepare so that we can meet those scenarios no matter what happens. And our numbers tell the story of what happens. You can't predict where this is going to erupt. We all have our own pandemic that we are moving through. And even in different parts of BC, it is quite different. So in the lower mainland, we know that the outbreak has been driven by, unfortunately, this virus getting into long-term care homes. And particularly, too, that it got into very early before it was recognized. And 24 of our 35 people who have died have been from those long-term care homes. So, you know, you can't model that. You can't predict that. It is particularly useful to use that as part of our modeling. What we need to know is what resources do we have so that we give everybody the best chance they have of surviving this disease and also ensuring that we have the health services and health care that is available for everybody else who needs it at the same time. So that is the approach that we have taken here in BC. As part of the state of provincial emergency, I know a lot of communities were asked to start making other facilities available for a number of reasons, including if there was extra capacity needed for our hospitals, our hospital system. We see field hospitals and 10 hospitals opening in other countries. And Minister Dix, you tell us about bed capacity daily and the numbers you provide make it sound like there is quite a lot of people who need it. How long can our hospital system handle this load, for how long can it handle it, and at what point could we start seeing people being needed to use other types of facilities outside of hospitals? This is why we have made such, why these two weeks are so important. This is our second incubation period since we put in the strong social distancing measures, the closing of in-classroom schooling, the travel restrictions that we have had, and the strong response around outbreaks in health care settings. The first incubation period, there were people who were already exposed. And we knew that there were people who were going to be getting sick. There was nothing we could do at that point, but try and detect them and make sure the health care system was able to care for them. We have seen 50 people a day who are positive for this disease and a number of them who need health care. This next two weeks is there our time, this is our line, where we are going to understand if those measures we put in place are working. And as I mentioned last week, I see a glimmer of hope. We are not seeing dramatic increases in the number of people who are positive, the number of people who are needing health care, we have seen increases, but it is staying steady. And if this continues, we have the capacity, and we have shown you that, we have the capacity to care for people appropriately, to make sure that we are not going to be overwhelmed and that we are able to care for everybody else who needs health care as well. But there are many, many things we are not in control of, and we can't yet say what is going to happen. We are picking up cases and outbreaks, we have seen that in the correctional facility, we have seen that in the community outbreaks that we have seen, and we are actively, the public health teams all around the province are actively following up on people and their cases and their contacts in different settings around the province so that we don't get a dramatic increase. But we need to continue to do that over the next couple of weeks, and we are part of that global community and what is happening in the United States affects what is happening here. We also know that there are people coming back that are being repatriated to BC from countries that are dealing with COVID-19. So we need to have a strong system in place to be able to detect if any of them become ill and make sure those transmission chains are stopped. So that is a very complicated way of saying, we are coping right now, but it is important to have a strong system that is not known, unknown, unknown, that could affect us in the next couple of weeks. And that is why it is so important that we hold the line, that all of us continue to do what we are doing because it is working, it is helping, it is making a difference for our healthcare system and for our communities right now. So before we take our last question, I just want to remind all reporters on the phone that if you didn't get a chance to get a chance to respond to any of the recommendations on protecting families and communities from COVID-19, visit bc-cdc.ca. For non-medical questions about the province's COVID-19 response, visit gov.bc.ca forward slash COVID-19. And for a full listing of the provincial health officers orders, visit gov.bc.ca forward slash PHO guidance. And our last question today comes from Albert Sue from Fairchild TV. Go ahead. Okay. I think that is it. Thank you. Just one more thing to add to the question with respect to measures we need to take about travelers. One we simply have to have and we are working on this, I know the federal government is, more quarantine space to potentially quarantine people who are coming through. And the second and the final thing I mentioned in those measures we need is much stronger, I think, screening at departure for people coming to bring people to British Columbia, whether they are coming from Seattle or whether they are coming from overseas. We obviously need more stronger screening at that point because we need to ensure that people who are sick get well where they are before they travel. Thank you. Thank you for today.