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📷 The Community Services Building will soon be temporary home of the Emergency Response Centre / via Jesse Woodward

Three more people have died from COVID-19 in BC over the past 24 hours, bringing the death count to 152. All three were in long term care homes on the lower mainland. There have been no new cases of the virus in the Island Health Region, but province-wide, 12 more people have been infected in the past day, with one at the Matsqui federal prison in Abbotsford. Dr. Bonnie Henry says she is thankful the case was detected early and the person had few risky contacts. Health officials expect the latest outbreak will not be like the other federal prison outbreak at Mission, where more than 100 inmates and a dozen staff contracted the virus. Previously, Henry has said the Mission outbreak was not caught early and federal officials did not have all of the COVID-19 protocols in place at that time. Currently, there is only one active case of COVID-19 there.

There will soon be hotel rooms available for vulnerable people in Nanaimo who need help to self-isolate during the pandemic. BC Housing says it has secured 73 spaces in four area hotels. 13 spaces are reserved for women fleeing violence. The remainder will be used by people who need medical support after being released from hospital, those who need to quarantine, as well as others with unstable housing and underlying medical conditions. However, it could take until the end of June or early July before those rooms are available.

That will also be the case at the Emergency Response Centre. The city announced on April the 30th, that the temporary centre would be located in the Community Services Building. But homeless men will not be housed there until July. The executive director of the Island Crisis Care Society says homeless women who are living at Samaritan House will be moved to the centre first, starting next month. Violet Hayes says there will be 21 beds reserved for women and 14 for men.

Reservations at BC parks will be limited to BC residents only this summer. The change in policy was not announced by the minister but was posted on the BC Parks Facebook page. The post says non-BC residents who made reservations before the pandemic should contact its call centre before June 15th, to receive a full refund. The online reservation system, for BC residents only, will open on Monday. Reservations made by non-residents after May 25 may be subject to immediate cancellation with no refunds. The post says the decision was made in support of staying local and avoiding unnecessary travel during the pandemic. Similar residents-only reservation policies are already in effect in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Written and reported by: Lisa Cordasco, News Director for CHLY 101.7FM.

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