People over 80 at home next up for vaccines

‘In the coming days and weeks, you will receive the information you need to know where your clinic will be, or how you will receive vaccine’

– Dr. Bonnie Henry

British Columbians aged 80 and over who do not live in long-term care facilities will soon be vaccinated, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says.

Details on how and when people who are 80-plus can get vaccinated will soon be provided, Henry said Monday.

“In the coming days and weeks, you will receive the information you need to know where your clinic will be, or how you will receive vaccine,” Henry said during the province’s daily update on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re working on the details in every community across the province,” Henry said. “There will be multiple ways that we will be contacting people.”

After delays in expected shipments of vaccines, a total of 154,496 people, most of them residents of longterm care facilities and front-line health workers, have received inoculations.

“Each week this month, our available supply will increase,” Henry said. “And we are looking forward to early in March when we anticipate being able to fully start our mass vaccination clinics around the province.”

Between Friday and Monday, a total of 1,236 British Columbians — including 152 in the Interior Health region — tested positive for COVID-19.

That means 70,952 people have been infected in B.C. since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020. More than 65,000 have recovered, there are about 4,000 active cases, and 1,259 people have died from COVID-19, including another 13 since last Friday.

As of Monday, there had been 40 cases of the coronavirus variant first identified in Great Britain detected in B.C., and another 15 cases detected in the province of the variant that originated in South Africa.

Almost all of the variant cases have been in people who travelled to Britain or South Africa, or in people who were close contacts of those who did, Henry said.

“The ones we know about, we are confident there has been no onward transmission,” Henry said.

“Every day that we stop the spread of this virus, no matter what the variant, we buy ourselves time,” she said.

“Time to get our immunization program up and running again, as we are going to be this week, and also time to better understand where we are seeing transmission and cases of these variants of concern in our communities,” Henry said.

Henry said she was generally pleased with how British Columbians obeyed public health orders and didn’t gather in large numbers to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday.

“Just as you did this past weekend, I’m asking everyone to do the same with the upcoming Family Day weekend,” she said. “We all need to stay local and not travel unless it is required for medical or work reasons.”

She urged people to be a tourist in their own community, this coming long weekend, by booking a night in a local hotel, going out for dinner, or exploring outdoor attractions near one’s home.

Public Zoom town halls are being held in connection with Central Okanagan Public Schools’ long-term facility plan.

The town-hall meetings are designed to draw public feedback on the district's plan to improve existing schools or build new ones in Rutland, the Mission, Central Kelowna, Glenmore, Lake Country and the Westside.

The townhalls started Tuesday and continue until Feb. 18. For specific dates, times, and topics for discussion, see sd23.bc.ca.

Preparation of the plan began last fall and a final report is expected to be ready for trustees approval in May.