Overseas travel not likely this summer, says Henry
British Columbians should not expect to travel overseas this summer and should instead plan on staying close to home, the provincial health officer said on Tuesday.
Dr. Bonnie Henry, speaking the day before B.C. Premier John Horgan will lay out plans for reopening society, said COVID-19 would bring a summer “where we’re going to be closer to home, where we’re going to have to find our joy and our fun within our own neighbourhoods.
“I also think that if we look around the world, we’re not going to have a whole lot of global travel or international travel in the coming weeks and months.
“This summer is when I think we need to start thinking about looking close to home. What are the things we can do with our close family, with our close contacts in our neighbourhood, in our area, and appreciate the beauty that we have and what we have here?”
Henry said that Horgan would outline what sort of summer activities would be possible, including what types of team sports could be played and how the retail sector could operate.
His announcement is expected to include guidelines for personal services — like barbers and spas — that have been forced to close since the provincial state of emergency was declared on March 18.
However, Henry warned people not to expect things to be back to the normal of January and February of this year.
“We cannot, right now, afford to go back to where we were in … our pre-COVID -19 ways of interacting where we had large groups of us who came together in small spaces and spent time together. Right now, that is very dangerous.”
Henry’s comments came as she reported the lowest daily increase in cases, just eight, since the state of emergency was declared.
She said that brought the total number of people who had contracted the disease to 2,232, with 639 active cases. There are 78 people in hospital, including 21 in intensive care.
Henry said that four people died from the disease between noon Monday and noon Tuesday, bringing that total to 121.
She said the health-care profession was learning more about the virus every day.
“We are learning every day about this virus, about who it’s affecting, about how it’s being transmitted, about what are the most effective things to prevent it, about new medications to treat it,” said Henry, adding she believed the discovery of a vaccine was in sight.
“Our ideal summer is to have low levels of cases that we are able to detect and we’re able to find people quickly (and) prevent clusters from becoming large outbreaks.”