 We will have a presentation for you about the next steps in our BC COVID-19 immunization plans. Dr Henry will have some updates and I will have some updates on a number of issues. Our update with respect to case counts and hospitalizations will come at approximately 3 o'clock and it will be a written update today. Thank you very much and good afternoon. As the minister said, we are here to share our latest update and our plans for the next phase of our immunization program here in British Columbia. As you know, our focus remains the same. From the very beginning of this pandemic, it has been on protecting people at particularly at highest risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19, protecting our health care system so that everybody who needs care can get it here in BC, keeping people and communities safe, but allowing us to come back together safely as much as we can. That is how this tool that we have now, a very effective vaccines, has played into our program here in British Columbia. As you know, vaccination is making a tremendous difference. 89.6% of eligible people 12 and older in BC have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. And over 84% have received given the time between dose one and dose two. And the fact that we have now a very effective vaccine, and the fact that people are still stepping up to get protected with this vaccine. Over 3.6 million people in British Columbia have downloaded their BC vaccine card and we have seen the positive effect that that measure has in being able to allow us to come back together safely or more safely. We know that this virus can still be transmitted in people who are vaccinated, but that is much, much less risky. It means that we are less chances of getting severe illness and less chance of pressing it on to others. And the vaccine card has been a very effective way of allowing us to mitigate the risks that we have had. We do know, however, that the majority of people who are ending up with severe illness and who are hospitalized, in particular, who are in the ICU are people who are not yet protected through vaccination. And that is an important consideration that we have. My focus, along with my team and public health and across the health system, has been to monitor in a number of times. We are looking at what is the illness here in British Columbia, where is transmission happening, who is being affected, what are the transmission rates. And we have seen, of course, that the new variants that is causing most illness across British Columbia, the Delta variant, is causing the transmission, is leading to infections very quickly in pockets of areas in the province where people are not yet protected through vaccination. We also, of course, are looking at the effects of the program to date. And we have seen, and I presented these data a number of weeks ago, that that interval between dose one and dose two makes a difference in how long protection we are getting from these vaccines that we have in BC and in Canada. And the fact that we went to an extended interval between dose one and dose two has meant that the vast majority of people in British Columbia have had the benefit of getting a mature response before they had their dose two, and that has leading to longer and stronger protection. So most people that were experiencing severe disease, and that large part is because of that interval that we are seeing. And that we have to look at what is happening at other places around the world and in Canada in the light of how our program has rolled out here in BC. For example, the approach taken in the United States and in Israel, which we are watching very carefully, they went with a very short interval with the three to four week interval between dose one and dose two. And our data and data around the world have shown that people, unlike other provinces, particularly Alberta and Ontario, and that is one of the reasons why we have, we are at different places in terms of recommending booster doses for people in long-term care. Having said that, we have started that program and it's rolling out and should be completed with that extra protection for residents of long-term care by the end of this month. We also continue to monitor outbreaks. We are seeing a lot of cases happening. Where is the virus causing that much pressure that we are seeing breakthrough and we are seeing detection of cases because we do a lot more testing around a community or facility where an outbreak is happening and who is being affected. So the breakthrough cases, and I'll show a little bit more data on that, helps us understand who is most at risk from waning of protection and what is happening across Canada and around the world to look at a number of things. What is happening in terms of booster doses, outbreaks, transmission in communities, but also where we are seeing the new variants arising. We know how important it is that we have protection across the globe before we can all be safe from this pandemic. And finally, of course, looking at the case rates in the community and how those are going to affect the hospitalizations ICU care. So those are important considerations that we have had for a number of months now and continue to monitor. What we have seen, and this is a very busy slide, but it is data that we have presented, it is available online, that looks at vaccine effectiveness. This is some of the real world data from British Columbia that we have seen from whatever combination of vaccines that you have received here in BC over time. And this goes out to four months, we now have the same data going out to six, seven, and eight months, both from here in BC and Quebec. And I think the important point that we need to make is the protection that we get, the immunity we get from these vaccines wanes a little bit over time, but it does not affect our immune system at all. It slowly goes down over time in two ways. So we measure the antibodies that are in our blood, what we call our humoral immune system, and those antibodies, whether from infection or from vaccination, all go down over time. And that is just how our immune system works. And that is important to monitor. It does not mean we are no longer protected. And the vaccine effectiveness is that of cell-mediated immunity. So those memory cells that we have as part of our immune system, those take mature and give good, strong protection over time. And that interval made a difference in how strong that cell-mediated immunity develops in people. And we can see that a little bit in one of these slides here, but I just put those up for reference. But what that tells us is that we have good, strong immunity for most people, but most people who got their doses early, and if we look back at our program, we started with those who are most at risk, so seniors and elders in long-term care, our seniors in the community, indigenous populations where we were seeing higher rates of transmission and infection and severe illness. And those people were more likely to get a shorter dose interval as well. So those are the people who are at higher risk of having severe illness. And we've seen some of that in the other, oops, some reason it's not moving ahead anymore. It tells me, okay, let's try this again. There we go. So what we've been looking at then is who is ending up in hospital in terms of people who are fully vaccinated, where is the risk-greatest for that reduction in hospital care? And what we're looking at is the reduction in protection that is leading to severe illness. And we see it's very unlikely in the younger age groups and much more common once we hit 70 and particularly people in their 80s. And this is some of the important information that helps us to understand who is losing protection from the vaccine and who is more likely to have increased risk of hospitalization or severe illness. And this is some of the information that we've been pulling together to make the decisions about where we go next. So we are going to be offering a booster dose for all British Columbians. But it will be based on what we have just seen as important risk factors for decreased protection over time and risk for ending up with severe illness, hospitalization or death. So everyone in BC who has been in the hospital for at least six months after the first dose two. And the timing that you will be offered this booster dose will depend on risk and the time it has been since your second dose. So we will be starting with the higher risk populations now and that includes long-term care residents which is underway. It includes people who don't have a strong immune system and we've already had a lot of people who have been in the hospital and the level that most of us have after two doses. And it will also now expand to include our seniors and elders in the community over age 70. Most of whom again receive their first and second doses earlier on in our program and are now at least six months from their dose two. It will also include our indigenous populations where we will build on the all of community approach that we have taken to provide vaccinations in communities and to community members who are living in and near communities as well as indigenous people living in urban areas. So we are starting as I mentioned with those who had a shorter interval between doses and those who are most at risk. The other group that we will be including in that are the people that are exposed to COVID. So in our ICUs, the emergency departments, our COVID wards where we know that even though we may have good protection and not have a severe illness, it can be very disruptive to our health care system which is stretched as it is at this time but also can mean risk of transmitting the illness to others in the hospital setting. So these small group, priority groups, we will be starting this very soon and I will be turning it over in a minute here to Dr. Ballum to give you the details of that. I also want to just mention that we, there are a couple of things that are important for us in terms of protecting communities. One is when we have outbreaks in communities and we see it in long-term care homes, we see it in some First Nations communities that we need to do to get this booster dose but we also need to make sure that those people who are not yet protected in the community get dose one and dose two. That keeps you safe but it also protects those around you, particularly those who are at most at risk right now. I will hand it off now to Dr. Ballum to talk about how we are going to do this in the next few months. Thank you so much, Dr. Henry and Minister. So I think that we are fortunate we have had a very successful first immunization program with dose one and dose two. As you heard the numbers from Dr. Henry were just about at 90% residents of British Columbia with dose one and coming very close behind about 84% or fully vaccinated with dose two. So as we look to delivering the booster plan, we can build on that success, build on our learnings, the expertise of the health authorities, the incredible online system that has been built and continue to be enhanced, the BC get vaccinated system that the public have become very familiar with. And we also have the advantages we move into the booster campaign of being able to engage our pharmacies. We have been working over the summer and through the early fall with the BC pharmacy association and the pharmacy sector to prepare them and get them ready to train up on the get vaccinated system. And they are continuing to put in place the kind, any infrastructure they might need to participate. And so we are very, very happy that we look forward to by the middle of January having about 85% of the pharmacies in this province across the whole province to be participating in our campaign. We also have community partners and you will remember for the dose one and dose two campaign in the clinics you had the Canucks or Air Canada or YVR or the bandits out in the Fraser Valley, the Red Cross, many community partners participated with us to help deliver our immunization for our public and they were a terrific addition. Many of them fortunately for them have gone back to work, their sectors have gone back to pretty much business as usual and there are a few, there's about 50,000 people who will continue to work with us to help deliver the booster campaign. And finally, Dr. Henry, you will remember way back through a PHO order, actually allowed a number of health professionals across many, many disciplines to actually have the authorization to participate as immunizers in our campaign. And many of them were retired and that's important because we want them to come back. Our healthcare system has a lot of people who are involved in all the business of COVID and the surge 4 or the wave 4 and they're also looking after many things that are non-COVID that are presenting to us in our healthcare system and we're going to need them to be doing that and so we're going to be looking to these other people who have the capacity to help us immunize in our clinics and across the province and deliver this vaccine. And one of the things that we've been trained is that we have a good, solid supply of vaccine. The two vaccines that will be offered in our booster campaign are Pfizer and Moderna. They're basically equivalent as a booster. We will be offering either one of those to people coming and presenting themselves for their booster dose. There's not any necessity to align the booster shot and we know many people already received a mixed vaccination program with Moderna and Pfizer and in some cases AstraZeneca and an mRNA vaccine. AstraZeneca recipients will be offered a booster with an mRNA vaccine and as I said we're very confident in the supply that we have through the rest of this calendar year out to December 2021 and then into 2022. The government of Canada did a great job nearly nine months ago now. They procured the booster supply for vaccine to be used in anticipation of a program such as this. So we'll just write. Okay. So this slide basically is a familiar construct for you. It lays out on the top line September to December timeline and then into January to May. Our campaign will run from now. Well, it actually started a couple of weeks ago with long-term care and assisted care and it will run all the way to the end of May. And to Dr. Henry's point, we expect to be able to vaccinate people presenting for a booster dose between a six to eight month interval from their dose two and have that done by the end of May. There will continue to be a tale of people because as you'll see, we will continue our ground game to get everybody we can vaccinated with dose one, dose two and then ultimately a long-term care and assisted care. And as the activity continues with our vaccination campaign, we will continue to have a need for booster many, many months out. But the vast majority will, we hope to get done between basically October and May. You've already heard that the clinically extremely vulnerable on the left-hand side have been invited since the middle of September to come in for their dose three. And we will be done and finish those facilities, those very frail, elderly by the end of this month. And then the rural and remote indigenous communities, we will ramp up that campaign. We already have some of those remote communities who have received a booster dose in terms of one of the tools we've used to deal with outbreaks in some of those communities. But we will now, you know, officially, as of today, start the rural campaign to visit every First Nations site, which as you will probably remember, is in the range of 200 across the province. We will be opening up our campaign to the highest-risk seniors in the general population, so that would be 70 and over. And as Dr Henry mentioned, all indigenous peoples who are eligible. So that would be indigenous peoples from 12 on up. And, you know, the other very frail people in our communities are those receiving long-term home support. And those seniors living in independent living. Many of them are independent, but some of them have significant needs. And so we will be using a combination of our community clinics and people being invited through the online system, as well as visiting independent living facilities on site. And we're very happy to have the BC Seniors Living Association working with us. They're bringing to the program their own resources, nurses, and licensed practical nurses to help vaccinate their independent living residents and get that job done as quickly as possible as well. And Dr Henry already mentioned the short interval healthcare workers who received their dose 2 after only 21 to anywhere from 3 to 5 weeks after their dose 1. And we'd like to get them protected as quickly as possible and then move on in January to the rest of the healthcare worker and physician community. We will also be inviting in early January, the rest of the clinically vulnerable, the group that is about half the total group of clinically extremely vulnerable, those are the people that are not immunosuppressed, but they have other conditions that predispose them if they get a bad infection with COVID to a poor outcome. So they've had good protection from their first dose 1 and 2 series and we'll bring them in in January to give them a booster. And finally, you know, as of sort of probably the middle of January, we'll start opening things up to everybody from 12 on up to come in with their invites when they receive it based on the interval from their second dose to come in and get vaccinated through the rest of the year. You can see on this slide we also have the continuing dose 1 and 2 that will carry on throughout. And then we are, you know, the children's vaccine decision is pending as soon as we have a decision both at Health Canada and we have the vaccine and we have the decision by Dr. Henry and her senior medical health officers, we will commence that campaign and run that through the rest of the many months. So moving on to just a couple of other things. You know, organizing this campaign, it's very, very important that we're not in the crisis that we're in when we had been, you know, almost a year dealing with COVID and the first small amounts of vaccine arrived in December 2020. And I think we all remember that day. I certainly remember Dr. Henry getting vaccinated for her shot and our first recipient in Vancouver Coastal who was a long-term care worker. Those were very exciting times. As we looked at how the campaign rolled out, the people were vaccinated according to, you know, the risk and their age and also the availability of vaccine. And as you can see, this is a graph that shows the profile of people who have become eligible at six months over the weeks from now to the beginning of February. And you can see the big peak in the middle which happens to land right around the corner of the country. So in order to have this campaign be very paced, predictable, to allow our clinics to set up their capacity for people to book into it and then arrive at the clinic and get through and get their vaccine in a timely way, we're going to smooth this curve out. And we're going to bring some people forward and give them an invite, you know, two to three weeks before their six-month interval and then we'll do the same on the ongoing campaign through to May. We really want this campaign to be, you know, more relaxed than the last one as Dr. Henry has said. This booster campaign is about providing people, you know, that extra kick that a vaccine booster gives you that hopefully will sustain them through May. And then we're going to bring some people forward and get their vaccine and then we're going to sustain them through many, many months. And that's really the thing that's going to allow us to bring this pandemic to, you know, a more steady state that we call endemic and allow us to get back to our lives, our work, our pleasure activities as quickly as possible. So going on to, you know, basically how are you going to get your booster? And I think this is very important for all of you and I encourage, you know, all of you to emphasize this wherever you can, that everyone should get registered in the get vaccinated system. It's very easy. It will allow an invitation to be sent when the interval is appropriate for you to get that invite. And then as many, many, many members of our public know, they can book and schedule their vaccination at the same time. And we have them up on board and running full tilt in the middle of January and they'll be able to book into a health clinic if they wish. And this will allow us to plan ahead and look at who's booking and the capacity that we need and can expect. And it just makes for a paced, relaxed booster campaign. There will be the Provincial call center that is a real thing. And in the online system and the call center, we know that people can make the arrangements to get their booster after they receive their invites. We do want to say this is a scheduled booster program. We're not going to allow drop-ins for a booster dose. It's really not necessary. And it will really, we know that drop-ins can, you know, provide quite a pressure on our clinics and, you know, gum up and so we're really going to encourage people, please book your vaccination online or through the call center, don't drop in for your booster dose or your dose 3. The locations, as you've heard, will be in the health authorities, community-based clinics, we'll have the pharmacies and we're appropriate in small communities will go in and do the community of a whole approach where we go in and run a clinic for a day or two or three and we'll be able to do that. And how that program is going to sort itself out, we're working on and that will be made clear to those local communities as quickly as possible. And for our First Nations communities, especially the remote ones, our First Nations health authority will be working with us and the other health authorities to get that job done. And for Indigenous people who live in our urban centers away from the city, they can go to a local health authority clinic, they can go and get their vaccine in a pharmacy or they can wait for the FNHA and the health authority if they're going to do a specific clinic on site, in their local community, those are all the options that they'll have available to them. So a paced campaign and over to Dr. Henry is going to talk about the benefits. Thank you very much. So there's a couple of reasons and particularly why it's important for us to start this now. We know that this vaccine is very highly effective and that most of us are having good, strong protection that's lasting for a long time and will last through this respiratory season. But we are also, as I showed, seeing breakthrough in certain populations and under certain conditions. So we know now that adding an extra dose can make a difference, particularly in those cases. But we are also learning about what is the optimal schedule for this vaccine against this virus and how this virus is mutating and changing over time, how long it takes for new strains to arise, and how effective different dosages and different intervals can be. So it may be, it may be that this third dose, this booster dose, gives longer lasting protection that may last for years. That is our hope. We do not yet know that. We are going to be following the data around the world and the data that will continue to follow here in BC to understand that better. But right now we know as well that from the studies that have been done by both Pfizer and Moderna around their booster doses, that you get a good, strong and quick antibody response when you get that booster dose. So we know that will give you a good, strong response. And for many of us, it also will mean longer lasting protection into next year and the year after, potentially. So we know it will protect people at higher risk of severe illness, who are also the ones who are longest since they had their primary series, and our hope and our expectation is it will help to reduce that pressure of the virus in our communities across BC and to reduce the hospitalization rates that we are going to have for the vast majority of us. This will be a three-step process starting in January, where you will receive a text or an e-mail, and not everybody will hear from us exactly 180 days since they had those two. There is time and there was protection, so we do need to be patient for that. The other thing, then you book your appointment and make sure that you get to your appointment and we will have, as we have said in the past, much smaller targeted clinics to support people in communities across the province, as well we will be pulling in our pharmacy colleagues to help us with this. I will also say that the consideration of being fully vaccinated for things like the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers like the use of the BC vaccine card will continue to be the two doses. So this booster program will not be impacting those programs at this time. I also want to remind us all that these vaccines are highly effective, but they are still not 100%. When this virus is circulating, we still have to take additional measures to protect those who are most at risk, to protect our families, those we are closest to, that we are most likely to transmit this virus to. Number one, of course, is to be vaccinated, and that's important, but also wearing masks where it's appropriate, where we're in those indoor settings where we can pass it on to others, staying home and staying away from others if we're sick and getting tested. Checking before you travel, there are some communities right now, as we know, particularly in the north, but also some communities in the interior and Fraser Valley where there is still a lot of this chance to travel right now. Respecting that not everybody has the same level of immune response to vaccines, and as this virus is still impacting us, we need to respect personal space. Stay outdoors. It's always safer than indoors. I know it's a challenge as we're going into winter, but if it's somebody that you want to see who is immune compromised, outdoors is safer. So again, remind ourselves to stay indoors and make sure we're making these plans. And of course, we'll never have to stop washing our hands. That's also important. So finally today, I want to talk as well about some corrections to our hospitalization data. As I mentioned, our teams periodically complete a data review to ensure that we are capturing all the information on people who are ill and receiving care. And looking at two different issues, one of which is a data error in the interior health hospitalization data, which started because of the rapid increase we saw in August, where we did modifications to the case and contact management system that we were using to follow people who were identified as having COVID in interior health. And what this meant was that all of the cases were counted, but there were some individuals where their hospitalization was not recorded in the public health line list. Over the past 21 months, about 10,814 people have been hospitalized with COVID-19, and this error affects only interior health because of the measures that they were doing. So we do have an accurate case count, and the census count in the hospitals is accurate, as is the ICU count. But what we didn't have is the number of people who were hospitalized who were cases in interior health. So we've gone back from the beginning of the pandemic to link that information, that data, it took some time to do that, and in total, the number of people ever hospitalized who have had COVID in interior health has gone up by about 204, from 1,544 people to 1,748 people. And the number of people currently in hospital will go up from 23, which is reported today, to 63. So this change, this data correction, will be in, will be visible on the BCCDC dashboard starting tomorrow. I think it is important to recognize that the overall number of cases is accurate and stays the same. It's a number of people who have ever been hospitalized as part of their COVID infection that we are now correcting. I will say also, the other issue that I'm still wrestling with is how to accurately portray that group of people that have been labeled as discontinued isolation. And it is proving to be a challenge, partly because our information systems and how those data are collected are not easily merged together to get a good picture of I said this last week and we are still challenged to try and come up with an accurate way of projecting those numbers of people. It's somewhere in the vicinity of about 170 people across the province who are still in hospital after their acute infection and recovering from COVID. In some cases, and I now understand that about a third of those are people who were actually discontinued isolation. And a third of those are people who were actually discharged from hospital that have come in for another reason. So that's something that we need to do a case-by-case chart review to understand. And that's why it's taking quite a bit longer than I expected. But we will have more updated information on that group of people in the coming weeks. And I can only say that it is one of the challenges that we have had with the number of information systems that we are mostly manually collected and it's very challenging to get that full picture of the people who are past that acute illness in hospital. So we'll have more to say on that. In closing, I do want to remind everybody that even with booster doses, we need to continue to take the precautions that we know work to protect us and to protect our communities. These booster doses will be an important role, particularly for those who are most at risk of severe illness and who were at risk early on and have had the longest period of time since they received their first doses. I think I believe that this extra protection for our seniors and elders who have been so effective by this pandemic will make an important difference in helping us get through this respiratory season, making sure that we're not adding burden to our hospitals as influenza is starting to appear as well. And in coupled that with the immunization that's likely to be available very soon for younger children, particularly school aged children 5 to 11, means that we will have the best protection we can have as we go into the holiday season and that will help us be able to come together safely in the coming months. So thank you very much and I'll see you in a minute. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Balin, Dr. Henry. I just wanted to bring some regular updates and then speak about the vaccination status of healthcare workers and give you an update on that. Obviously today is a significant and a solemn day on that subject. Firstly, I just want to bring you up to date on the overall occupancy rate of the healthcare system. This is our important daily measure of where we sit in terms of both available beds and where we sit in terms of demands on the system. This is not just COVID-19, of course, but the entire system. You'll know across the system we have 9,229 base beds. Of those today, 8,817 are filled in our census. We've also added to that surge beds, 2,553 of which 410 are occupied. So that just gives you a sense and a context. So our overall census is 9,147. That's on a base bed complement of 9,229. So not to put too final point on it. We are and everywhere in healthcare, everywhere in BC, is exceptionally busy. With respect to critical care, we have 510 base critical care beds in the province. We've added 218 beds in the province. We've also added 18 surge beds during the COVID-19 pandemic for a total of 728. Of those beds, 440 of the base beds are filled and 25 of our surge beds are filled for a total of 465. This gives us a sense of where we sit in the province today. It should be said, of course, that this reflects all of the actions that we are taking to manage the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on acute care. For example, in critical care, many of those in critical care in the Vancouver Island health authority are from the north today. As you'll understand, equally, we have a significant, we're over 100% of our base bed capacity, if you look in total, in the interior health authority and that represents an extraordinary challenge there. The final thing I just want to point out, as you know, 89.6% of the state's COVID-19 vaccine, 89.6% of people over 12 who are eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine are vaccinated approximately 84.5% of those who have received their second dose. We have today, and we're providing all the numbers at 3 o'clock, 155 people in critical care. And of those in critical care who are under 50, this is an important point, that issue of vulnerability on breakthrough. Of those, 155 cases of COVID-19, we have 133 cases, 133 are unvaccinated. And under 50, all those under 50, there are 43 people in critical care today in BC with COVID positive for COVID-19, 42 of those, 43. 42 of those, 43 are unvaccinated. And I think, if I would say, and I think I speak for Dr. Baum, Dr. Henry and health care workers across BC, the message from that is to get vaccinated. I just want to bring you an update on where we are in terms of surgical cancellations, which is one of the ways that we are managing the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic to our health care system, that during the reporting period October 17 to 23rd, health 30s postponed 200 non-urgent scheduled surgeries at 17 in Fraser Health, 8 in Northern Health, 77 in Vancouver Coastal Health, 98 in Vancouver Island Health. No surgeries were postponed by the health care authority in Interior Health and the provincial health services authority. From September 5 to October 23rd, there have been now been 2,140 surgical postponements. For the week, the most recent reporting week we have from October 3 to October 9th, health 30s report that 6,604 surgeries were completed. And that is, I would say, under these circumstances, an extraordinary achievement by health care workers across BC. Finally, I want to bring you up to date on the issue of contact tracing. As you will be aware, we are continuing to hire contact tracing to support people who test positive for COVID-19. We have added 20 contact tracers this past week, bringing to 1,542, the number of contact tracing staff in place across the five regional health authorities and the provincial health services authority. And they are, as you know, busy doing very important work, including supporting people who are dealing with the challenges of a diagnosis of COVID-19. Finally, I want to speak about today. It is a significant day today, as you know. For two sets of people working in health care, for our health care system, and really for everyone in long-term care assisted living on the one hand, or at one point in the process, and all other health care workers, medical staff on the other hand. We know, you know that on October 12th, that all those working in long-term care and assisted living needed to be vaccinated, and that those who were not vaccinated were placed on two-week unpaid leave, commencing October 12th. This is followed on October 26th, which is today, by termination of employment. This has been communicated broadly to employees, to people who are working in long-term care and assisted living, and to employees, unions, and players, and to the public. This sector, this sector, and we're talking long-term care and assisted living, of course, and broad sector, is made up of health authority owned and operated care homes, which have health authority owned and operated employees, and other employees, but this is a significant moment for them. And we're very, all of us are very solemn about this moment, because the requirement to get vaccinated is an absolute necessity for the health care system. But we know the impact on people and on families, and we are hopeful and encouraging that people will still take the opportunity to get vaccinated, and those who are not able to work at present, and today, over the next couple of days, that will be formally losing their employment will get vaccinated, and we'll be able to return to work also today. The vaccination requirement in the broader health care system is being brought into place, and I just wanted to give you an update on the numbers. Yesterday we provided significant numbers to people, to all of you, with respect to, that included a category called unmapped employees, but I want to give you the update, because those have been gone through case by case, and these are the current numbers of total health authority, health care workers, excluding long-term care and assisted living direct employees. It's 126,343 workers to date, and we keep making corrections, and there's additions to the list, including some people who are vaccinated outside of British Columbia, but fully vaccinated, 119,627, partially vaccinated, 2,626, not vaccinated, 4,090. So those are the significant numbers, and obviously, in different health authorities, and those are the significant numbers, and obviously, in different health authorities, and those numbers are different. So the number of not vaccinated, which are most effective, is those of the individuals who will be on leave of absence without pay, the highest not vaccinated rate is in the interior health authority, it's 7%, and that unique count is 1,369 employees, not vaccinated. That number is 5% in northern health, 376, 2% in Fraser health, 644, and that number is 2% in Fraser health, 644, 2% in Providence health care, 122, 2% in Vancouver Coastal health, 522, 2% in the provincial health services authority, or 496, and 3% on Vancouver Island, that's 678. And obviously, health authorities are taking steps to across BC to deal with the challenges presented by the community, and the community, and the community, and the community, and the community, and the community, and the community, and the community, and the community, and the community, and the community, and the community, and the various challenges presented by this. I would say the numbers are made up of all those who worked at least one day. So there's a number of staff who are перв staff who have worked a lot of days, but there are other staff who are obviously very important people in health care teams, and this is, as noted, a necessary step of the sole of the because it has implications for those people and their families and for patients and their families , but it is what all of us need to pandemic are healthcare workers across BC, you can see it in these exceptional work that's been done on vaccination and emergency response, in primary care, in long-term care, our healthcare workers have been heroes in this campaign. And so, well, this was, as I say, a necessary step and an important one. We're also solemn today because we know the implications for people and we know why this is a necessary step to protect people in our healthcare system. So I wanted to thank you all very much for that, and we're happy to take your question. A reminder to reporters on the line, please press star one to enter the queue. You will be limited to one question and one follow-up. For our first question, we go to Justine Hunter, Global Mail. Thank you. And this is a bit repetitive from earlier, but I know all the data is not in, but I'm looking for a summary, Dr. Henry, on what your recommendation is to people about whether or not they want that booster dose right now. And thank you for that. It is an important consideration. And I think that the message that I have is that most of us have good, strong protection, and we don't need a booster dose right now. But come next spring, it is something that we should consider for longer-term protection for the groups of people that we're focusing on right now. So those are the people who were immunized first because of the risk and the biggest risk being age. And we know the older we are that we don't mount a strong and immune response to vaccination. So I absolutely recommend it for people who are over age 70 in the community, for people in long-term care and assisted living, for indigenous people who we know are differentially affected and for a variety of reasons are being more exposed to the virus right now because of outbreaks we're seeing in communities and for those health care workers who were immunized early on who are where it can be not only a risk to us and we might not have severe illness, but it can be so disrupted to our health care system where it's so strained at the moment. So those people who are eligible in the next few months will be making this as available as we can to you and absolutely recommend that you take this booster. We'll have more information as we as we follow what's happening as we look at our vaccine effectiveness over the next few months and we'll be updating the recommendations to the young healthy people as we go into the new year. Justine, do you have a follow-up? I do and thanks for that. And this is to Dr. Ballum, I just wanted to give you some numbers around how many people are expected to be getting their third dose by the end of this year. And if you've got any update on where we're at, I know you say we have a robust supply of vaccine but are we actually giving more back because some of it's expiring or just what does the supply look like right now? So thanks Justine and to the answer to your first question, we estimate we'll be vaccinating or projecting the capacity to vaccinate about a half a million people between now and the end of December. So in terms of our vaccine supply, we certainly have we have vaccine on hand, we keep vaccine at Inamar facility in Ottawa and we're in close touch with our federal colleagues. So we know we can draw down, you know, at least what we're going to need and there will be more if we have, you know, a response that is more robust than even we are projecting, there will be sufficient vaccine on hand. For the next question, we go to Richard Zussman, Global News. And this does tells a bit to that. This could be for Dr. Henry and Dr. Palombe. Does that number factor in children? How are we going to immunize both five to 11 year olds once approved by Health Canada as well as doing booster shots? Will they be done in several locations? Do we have enough vaccine to manage both groups at the same time? Could boosters be pushed back in order to ensure children are immunized or vice versa? How are those challenges getting grappled with as we await the timeline for Health Canada? Yeah, you know, the really good questions, things that we've been wrestling with and talking with our teams about over the last few weeks and why we've taken the time to do that thinking over the last, predicting the last two weeks as we've got more and more information about those two. So a couple of things. One is the vaccine supply and what we are hearing from Health Canada and from the manufacturers about the vaccine for five to 11 year olds. It will be a different formulation than what we're giving now to adults. Not only is it a smaller dose, so it is half of the, for the Pfizer vaccine, it's less than half actually, it's a 10 microgram of the antigen. It also is a completely different formulation. So we cannot just use the adult dose for children. And yes, we expect and we've heard from the federal government that they have got a commitment from Pfizer to have that child formulation available as soon as it's approved for use by Health Canada. In terms of how we're going to be able, so in terms of the vaccine, yes, we are confident that we'll have sufficient vaccine to do both programs. In terms of how we're going to roll them out, a lot of it will be together because we know that the parents of younger children are looking for a certain type of environment to have their children immunized and those are the same environments where we can provide booster doses for some of the people in our communities. So in some cases, if I think of a number of our First Nations communities, they are looking at having particularly ones who are not having ongoing transmission at the moment. Can we do a whole of community approach where we give a booster dose and also the childhood immunization at the same time? Can we also look at clinics where older people and children and families can come together to be immunized with the appropriate vaccines? So those are all things that are being worked out by our teams across the province depending on the community and the situation in each community. I don't know if you want to add to that. Thanks. Thanks Dr. Henry and really just to add, you know, we do, we have planned to integrate the children's vaccine if it's approved and we have the vaccine available and if we have a slower response or it's delayed, then we will be able to continue to draw in, you know, the higher risk groups that continue, that we would be planning to continue in January. We can bring them forward. So we will keep, we will plan, that's when I said a PACE program, we will plan our capacity, we will send our invites aligned with that capacity, we'll be tracking it on a very, you know, pretty much a daily basis to make sure we're able to fill our clinics and that we're getting people in in the right order at the right interval. Chair, do you have a follow-up? For Minister Dix, we've seen a few examples. We reported one last night of clinics in smaller communities that have been forced to close. In one case, people have to travel to trail from Grand Forks for dialysis because it's closing due to somebody not being immunized. How many cases do you believe are there across the province where, you know, medical clinics or medical facilities are required to close or will be impacted with schedules due to staff not getting immunized? I think you'll see where we see the most significant challenges. Let's give you areas because we're obviously working through this throughout the province, but we see the most challenge in interior health because it has the highest rate of unvaccinated people in the province and therefore less in northern health and then less in the other health authorities. And so we're hopeful certainly that some people, and we've been seeing this in the last number of days, will get immunized and we're hopeful that they do that and address the problem that way. I think it's fair to say that in some areas, for example, diagnostic imaging or labs in different parts of the province, there will be some impact and we'll either have to initially reduce hours in order to address that or provide other staff in the weeks to come and we're working through that now. But obviously we've been preparing for this and in some areas such as long-term care where we've hired thousands of workers, close to 6,000 workers in the last year as part of our health care program and health care assistance program, we were able to respond more quickly. In areas where people are more highly credentialed and require more time to be trained, it is more of a challenge. So overall 97% is a high level of vaccination. If you look at both partial one dose, which is a small percentage and full dose, which is closer to 95% across the province. But there are challenges because our health care system is dealing with two public health emergencies and lots of demand after 20 months of the pandemic. But those are the areas that we have some issues in that we're identifying and working on. Diagnostic imaging is one lab is another and there will be some impact on surgery in interior health in this week. And just as we did in long-term care, we'll be making adjustments to deal with that and supporting regions in particular in this case, as we have for northern health, as we have for interior health in the past or Fraser health will be providing additional supports to ensure that a high level of care continues to be provided. But look, it's a big challenge and it's and but a necessary one in order to ensure that people are safe in a time of pandemic. For the next question, we go to Shannon Patterson CTV. Oh, hi, Minister Dix along the same lines. Can you tell us out of those 4,000 or so workers in the health care field who remain unvaccinated? How many of them are direct patient care workers, doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, people who work directly face to face with patients? Well, what I can tell you is if you look across the system, so first long-term care and assisted living, that was 2 weeks ago. But there are obviously fewer categories of employers, fewer employees in those categories. So in the large categories in long-term care and assisted living, there wasn't any real difference in the vaccination rate with credential, right? So our health care assistants were within, they were actually the highest, I think, in the categories, but they were within decimal points of registered nurses and licensed practical nurses who were the main categories or other people, obviously, who support long-term care homes. So we didn't see across the board much difference in terms of categories of workers and that is true as well in acute care. So while there are administration staff and others who are unvaccinated and will be affected by this across the health care system, this 126,000 workers, they're critical, all of them, to patient care for people. And there's not really a significant difference as to class of employees. So nurses and health care workers, health care assistants, health sciences professionals, overall in the large numbers and indeed doctors have very similar rates of vaccination, all extremely high, but a lot of the people affected are in patient care. As we go through the numbers and obviously today is still a day when we're hoping people get vaccinated when we produce the final numbers. We'll provide you, as we did, in long-term care and assisted living with some numbers by category so you can see the impact on medical staff and on health care workers staff, what's called medical staff, but really the difference between the two, they're both really on 97% is not significant. So if you look at the number of people across the categories, it's about 3% and there isn't very much variation as to health profession or worker status. Shannon, do you have a follow-up? You spoke earlier about terminations in long-term care for people who still, you know, a couple weeks later have not gotten vaccinated, have not returned to their jobs. Can you give us numbers of people who are imminently going to be terminated? Well, we will. I mean, the long-term care sector is slightly different than the health care sector, as you know, Shannon, because we have our publicly funded beds, which are roughly 30,000, just under 30,000 across the province. About two-thirds of those are either non-profit or for-profit providers or contracted beds. So we are contributing and supporting the patients, but the care is being provided there. And then there's the direct healthcare owned and operated. So as we said, the numbers are in the range of 1,800. Now, again, all of these workers are people who have worked at least one day. So a significant number are casual employees. Nonetheless, this applies essentially to that whole group of employees. And again, over the next couple of days, we'll update you on that information. But it's a very solemn thing, because all the people who work in our healthcare system, I think, work with great commitment. And all of them do. And this is a very strong action needed in a pandemic to protect healthcare workers, other healthcare workers, other healthcare professionals, patients in the public. But it's also a very solemn thing for people who have contributed to the care of others to be facing that. And we're certainly hopeful that many of them will choose to get vaccinated and get back to work. The next question goes to Victor Kaiser, Radio NL. Hi, Dr. Henry. Thanks for doing this. I just wanted to kind of shift focus a little bit, perhaps, on to capacity restrictions here. Of course, last week you said restrictions were eased in BC, except if we had regional restrictions, that of course came into place and came into effect rather this week. We've reached out to Interior Health now on multiple occasions to see really what their plans are to maybe start easing some restrictions here for Camelus Places games and what have you. They haven't really told us anything, in fact, suggesting that they're even perhaps waiting for direction from your office before easing some of those restrictions where they can. So I guess what I want to find out, basically, is if there is guidance from your office to Interior Health at this point, when it comes to easing those capacity restrictions, and perhaps when can we see things with concerns here. Of course, the Vancouver Giants, for example, in Langley can be at 100% capacity. But Fraser Health has been seeing some of the increased number of cases in the province. Yeah, and I understand that, and I have been working with my colleagues in Interior Health. We have been reviewing the orders, and it is absolutely a decision that we make together with my office, or well, myself and the Chief Medical Officer in Interior Health. And we have been looking at a number of different things in Interior Health, in the same way that we are looking at what's happening in the north, and in Fraser and Fraser East, in particular, where the restrictions remain in place. So there's a couple of things. One is, of course, the transmission in the community and where it's happening and who it's affecting. The other is the vaccination rates in communities. So where we are still seeing high rates of transmission and lower rates of immunization, those are all things that are important and we take into account. And the third, of course, the impact on the health care system that we're seeing right now. And Kamloops is a good example where, unfortunately, we still have a lot of transmission in the community. And as vaccination rates are coming up, that is great. But we're not at the point where we feel we can take that risk of allowing that type of activity to occur with the stresses that are on the health care system right now. But things are settling down in the interior. I absolutely people are doing a great job. Those vaccination rates are coming up. The measures we're taking are making a difference. And it is moving around in different communities in different ways right now. So we are looking at this on a day-to-day basis. And I do believe it's going to be settling within the next few days. And I hope that we'll be able to lift restrictions and be able to get back to those important hockey games and other arts and other events safely very soon. And as I say, it is a joint decision between my office and interior health. And I'm hopeful that within the next week we'll be able to look at if things continue on a good path. As we talked about today, there's still a lot of pressure on hospitals in the interiors. Victor, do you have a follow-up? I do. Just kind of glad you mentioned hospitals, of course. Dr. Henry, you know, of course, the vaccine mandate coming into effect for some of those health care workers today. We've heard of concerns, as I'm sure you're aware, at Royal Inland Hospital given staff shortages and what have you. And it sounds like with this mandate we're going to be losing some more staff potentially at the hospital and at other facilities. I know the Premier said yesterday he's confident the health care system will continue seamlessly. But perhaps you or Minister Dix, you know, what can you say to people here now who might be more concerned that they may not get the care they need given that some staff members here are adamantly refusing to get the vaccine that is available to them? Well, first let me just address the importance of immunization in health care. And this will not be the first time that you will have heard this from me. We know that it is important to protect ourselves so that we're able to provide care. But also we're protecting our families. We're protecting our co-workers. And most importantly, we're protecting those vulnerable people who we care for. So it is essential. And I am anything that we can do to answer the questions that health care workers have about these vaccines to help address some of the misinformation I know is out there that is causing people to be concerned. Those are the things that we need to do and that we will do to support you to be immunized. It is so disruptive and detrimental to care when we have outbreaks in hospitals as we have a couple in the interior right now. And that is the reason why we have this vaccine mandate in place. And because we have a system that is interconnected, and I think the congratulations or the I'm not sure the right word is, but the fact that our system has come together to support each other through this as well. And we'll be looking at other parts of the system to supplement areas in the interior where there's a shortage of people in a temporary basis. And a lot of work has been done on that. And perhaps I'll turn it over to Minister Dicks to talk about some of those issues. And just to say that, you know, over the course of the pandemic, we've taken steps to support regions of the province that at one point of the pandemic or another have faced more challenges. At the beginning, it was Vancouver Coastal Health and long-term care where we saw the most significant cases. For the first couple of months, they had the most cases overall, even though they represent 22 percent of the province. And Fraser Health, of course, notably had significant periods where we had high case counts and we put significant resources to support the Fraser Health Authority. And equally in Northern Health right now, 67 people in each case with teams around them individually in critical care being brought down principally to Vancouver Island and Metro Vancouver Health Authorities. And this is true of Interior Health as well. I mean, one of the things about this pandemic has been, I think, how closely everyone has worked together to support one another. You know, we compare one region to another and say we can do this here and not this there. The truth is that the measures are in place to support people in Interior Health and the actions we're doing to support the Interior Health Authority in this difficult time are going to be there to support people in Interior Health. This is all of us. Metro Vancouver for Interior Health or the reverse that we do significantly here. I just want to make the point in terms of Interior Health that we have in total beds, 1,842 base and surge beds in Interior Health, of which 1,436 are base beds. Our current, today, our census today in Interior Health is 1,528 in other words. Well, it's under our base and surge capacity. It's above our base bed capacity, meaning people are our extraordinary healthcare teams led by Susan Brown Interior Health are doing a remarkable job in supporting patients. But we want obviously those numbers to come down. That's critically important. And this challenge of people who are unvaccinated adds to that. That's why we'll be providing and continuing to provide supports to Interior Health in this period. People have to get vaccinated. They just do. It's a difficult thing. And that includes we'll have the final numbers as we work through in the next few days. But our numbers as of today, 4,090 people across BC, 1,369 people in Interior Health, which is more than in Fraser Health and Vancouver Coastal Health combined. That is something that we have to work on and address together. And I want to say to everybody in the Interior, we will be there for you. Just as the healthcare system was there for people in the north and in Fraser Health and on Vancouver Island and in Vancouver Coastal Health throughout this pandemic. Next question, Matt Preprost, Alaska Highway News. Hello. Good afternoon, Minister Dix. I think you may have just actually answered my question. So I just want to confirm and clarify how many patients from Northern Health have now been medivac elsewhere in the province? I believe you just said 67, but correct me if I misheard. 67, that's right. And the majority of those, not all of those, are dealing with COVID-19. Number aren't because they were moved down because of the pressure on facilities there. But that's the number we're at today. I should say also that Interior Health, particularly with some people out of Cornell, has been very supportive of Northern Health as well. And this is just another example of health authorities working together. But I just want to say, you know, we deal with lots of numbers. And so that, I don't know if 67 seems like a big number or not. In every single case you're talking about someone who probably can't breathe on their own, who requires significant staffing around them to get them down from one place to another. And when they get there, who go from communities hundreds of miles away to be in critical care in other communities, it is an immense thing. I can't tell you the work being done by our air ambulance teams, by our nurses, all those involved in patient travel. This is, this step that has been taken is unprecedented. And it shows the commitment we have to one another. And I have nothing but compassion for people who are sick ever, regardless of the circumstances. But we have to understand what a massive thing that our health care workers and health care professionals are doing here in addition to all of the other things we're doing in the amazing immunization campaign that's going on in BC. Matt, do you have a follow-up? Yes, thank you. Just with the worker mandates now in effect, what is the province's plan, I guess, to backstop and fill the gaps in staffing and shift schedules at facilities across the province, but especially here in the north where staffing concerns have been acute? In lots of facilities, particularly in your part of the north, we've been making preparations for some time because as you're aware, overall vaccination rates are lower there. So we were prepared in places such as Rotary Manor and Peaceville and other places during the long-term care and assisted living mandate that came into place October the 12th. So we were prepared there and that preparation has been going on now for weeks. And where it can have the largest effect, in places where there are lots of employees, you were asked about Royal Inland Hospital earlier, that has a very large complement of employees that are facing exceptional challenges there. In places with large complements, there's lots of flexibility. But remember, there's also a lot more specialty of work throughout the acute care system and in particular and in community. And so if you've got a clinic or an operation that has 8 to 10 employees or a specialty of an operation, and this is not an example but say something such as renal care where you'd have a limited number of employees and one or two of them are missing or are not able to work in that circumstance, it's really challenging. So that's the granular level of the work that our health authority teams have been doing in the last week to prepare for this. And on the ground, while we're working through the overall numbers here and on the ground, people understand very precisely what's involved for their employees and have been working through it case by case, but it's nonetheless a very significant challenge. We have time for one more question and we will go to Bell Puree, CBC. And this question is either for Dr. Henry or Dr. Ballum. Can you explain the difference please between the third dose and a booster dose if there is one? And as in, you know, will people being offered an additional dose of a COVID-19 vaccine outside of the clinically, you know, extremely vulnerable group be offered a third dose with the same amount of vaccine in it or a third dose with a smaller amount of vaccine in it? And we need it answered in English and French, please. Okay. Yeah. So that is, it's one of those semantic things that people who are immersed in vaccinology for many years, like myself. So technically, a third dose is part of a primary series where you need all three doses to build up enough immunity to be considered protected. And for people who have severe immune compromising conditions, whether it's because you're taking certain medications, whether you have certain hereditary conditions that affect your immune system, whether you're on cancer treatment, these are the types of people who may not get a good response from two doses of the COVID vaccine. So a third dose in that case is part of the primary series too. So for most of us, we're saying the primary series is two doses. That's what you need to get a baseline level of immunity that gives you protection for a period of time and we're learning how long that period of time is. And so those are people, that's what you need to get your immune system up to a certain level. A booster dose on the other hand is when your immunization is up to a certain level and over time it goes down. And it is another dose of the vaccine that boosts that response to bring you back up to a higher level. So there are a number of different vaccines where you have a primary series in childhood and then you get a booster dose every few years and some of them like tetanus for example, where it is actually your protection levels, your antibody levels go down over time and you need to boost those up every 10 years. So with this vaccine, we don't know yet what the optimal schedule is and whether giving two doses because the initial trials were done to try and get as much protection as quickly as possible. We're now learning that spacing those first two doses of the primary series out makes a big difference in terms of how long that protection lasts and so you might not need a booster dose. On the other hand, we are also learning that this virus doesn't replicate and change and mutate as fast as some things like influenza. So it may be that that third dose, what we're now calling a booster dose, boosts your response enough that it gives you longer lasting protection and it may be in time that the primary series will change. It'll change to you have a dose at day one and then you have your second dose in the primary series at six months or later. We've seen that with vaccines like for hepatitis B or hepatitis A or HPV. As we learn more, we determine what the optimal dosage is for both the primary series and whether you need a booster dose maybe two years later or three years later or five years later. So there's a lot that we don't know yet. So that's the gray area going forward. But right now we know that a third dose is needed for some people whose immune systems don't respond to two doses in a primary series and for most of us, the third dose will be boosting of that primary series to get us through a next longer period of time. And I will say as well that both Pfizer and Moderna have applied to regulators both in the United States and Canada for approval of a booster dose right now. Any of these booster doses are what we call off-label use of the vaccine. Health Canada is considering approving booster doses. And the Pfizer booster dose is the same dose as the adult dose. But Moderna has put in an application for their booster dose. It's a half dose. So they have a much higher amount of the antigen in the product that we're using. And they suggest that they only need half that amount in their booster dose. But right now, particularly for these populations that we're recommending, get this booster dose in the next few months so people over age 70, Indigenous people, healthcare workers who were immunized early, a full dose of an mRNA vaccine is the recommendation for now. And more as we learn more in the coming months. Prime Minister, I would first like to welcome you to the federal committee, Jean-Yves Duclos. I think Mr. Duclos would certainly be better at answering this question in French than me. But it's time. And I would say that there is a certain category of people who want a system of immunization and compromise, who need a three-in-a-four to complete their series. And this is the case, for example, of 15,000 people who were sent by the invitations to be vaccinated in mid-September. So there is this category. And then there is the category that is composed of almost everyone, after all, who may be able to benefit from the long-term care centers, for example, who will benefit from a booster dose, who will benefit from, let's say, protection. And two doses start to degrade, even slightly, in times that may benefit from this vaccine. And that's what we do primarily for those who are the most vulnerable in the society. And after that, for everyone. I do the World Health Organization recently asked developed countries not to give third doses, as long as people in less developed countries haven't yet got access to the first two doses. So how did that position factor into the decision to provide these third booster doses to British Columbians? And that is something that we are very aware of. I talk about it today with my chief medical officer of health colleagues with the public health agency of Canada. Our responsibility for judicious use of vaccines so that we are a good global citizen in making sure vaccines are available for people around the world. And I mentioned that today as an important factor in how we are monitored, because we are not safe in any way from this pandemic. It won't be over until it's over everywhere. Having said that, and there's a couple of reasons why the program that we have is the way it is. The WHO has said that it is important to protect those vulnerable people who where we are seeing protection wane over time and it's leading to serious illness. And that is the focus of our booster program right now. They also have said that do not give booster doses to the general population until next year. And that is also one of the things that we took into consideration. We're looking at the protection that we're seeing. Because we used mixed and matched vaccines, we were much more efficient with our system and it won't be until next year that most people will be at that six-month or longer period where a booster dose will be needed. And we will continue to monitor how long the optimum time period is for most people as we're going forward into this. But it is a very important consideration. It's one of the reasons why we made sure that we gave back to the COVAX initiative vaccine that we were not going to be using in the short term here in BC as part of our contribution to that. But these are all things that we're trying to find the balance of protecting people in BC who most need it right now and why we haven't rushed in to booster doses for everybody for when we know that we have good strong protection in most people. Say in English just to put this in context, eight months ago, look at eight months ago, there were 68,157 second doses in total in BC and six months ago there were 89,035. We've done between 90 and 100,000 third doses, supplementary doses. The Canadian government and Canada support international efforts to do the same. What we've said following the ideas of the World Health Organization is just to say that the main target of our efforts this year, that is the year of the calendar of 2021, on the most vulnerable people, this is essential, it will reflect the need to protect vulnerable people here in BC during this pandemic. And we will continue to do that. Bien entendu, cela va être dendres après la fin de cette année à tout membre et donc la nécessité de continuer à faire tout pour protéger les gens ici en BC est bien entendu important. Mais aussi important, c'est de soutenir les efforts dans le monde pour la production des vaccins, ce qui est essentiel par tout le monde. Et la distribution de ces vaccins soutiennent en termes de manoeuvres, si vous voulez, pour assurer que tout le monde dans le monde peut être vacciné dans les mois à suivre. Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much.