No word from Henry on further easing of restrictions
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said Monday the next phase of lifting restrictions may not begin this week, despite it being two incubation periods since the last phase was introduced.
Henry said that “maybe” restrictions could lift further this week, but it’s “not a yes.”
“I said at the very beginning that the whole phase thing is more of a dimmer switch,” she said. “It’s not … hard and fast.”
On May 18, Phase 2 of the B.C. restart plan was introduced to allow personal services like hair salons to reopen, and pubs and restaurants to serve guests inside.
Since then, schools have partly reopened, museums and art galleries are set to reopen, the film industry has restarted, and strict seating numbers loosened for pubs and restaurants.
When the restart plan was announced in mid-March, Phase 3 was loosely scheduled for the middle of June — after two COVID-19 incubation periods.
Henry said that while B.C. was faring well in its fight with the disease — with no deaths reported between noon Friday and noon Monday — other parts of the world were not.
“We have been looking at the numbers, as we’ve said, and so the second incubation period comes up very soon,” she said. “Those are the transitions. It’s not going to be full on, full off. As we said, it’s the dimmer switch. Yes, we’ll be looking at transitioning, around travel, around safe travel within B.C., and certainly, that’s what we’ve been saying for this summer.”
There have been 36 new cases of COVID-19 reported in B.C. over the last three days. Henry said there are 182 active cases, with 13 patients in hospital, including four in intensive care.
Those numbers continue to fall. There have been 2,745 cases of COVID-19 reported in B.C. since the first case in late January, and they include 168 deaths.
Henry said there were four active outbreaks in health facilities; the South Granville Park Lodge outbreak has been declared over.
There are no new community outbreaks.
B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix said Alberta, Alaska and other U.S. states were declaring increasing case numbers.
Dix also addressed reports that some tourists from the U.S. were entering Canada by saying they were headed to Alaska, then staying in B.C.
“Just to say about the border, if people are misleading people at the border, there can very likely be consequences for that,” Dix said. “I would advise anyone even contemplating such a thing to give their head a shake and not do it. It doesn’t make sense, and they put at risk, in some respects, their ability to visit our country in the future.”