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📷 Chief Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry provides an update on COVID-19 on May 23, 2020 / via Province of British Columbia

The Provincial Health Officer says BC doesn't need to take up the federal government's offer to help provinces with contact-tracing. However, Dr. Bonnie Henry says she'd like to see federal resources go to enhancing monitoring of people entering the country. Henry says she would welcome more help from the federal government to check up on travellers who are supposed to be under quarantine and to expand BC's policy of demanding travellers provide self-isolation plans, to all entry points across the country.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Dr Henry presented the latest COVID-19 numbers, reporting 2 deaths in long term care homes in the Fraser Health Region. There were no new cases of the virus in Island Health, but province-wide, there were 10 new cases, including five at a frozen fruit processing plant in Abbotsford. The Nature's Touch plant has voluntarily shut down operations.

Nanaimo city council is being asked to allocate close to $200,000 to deal with what is being called "social disorder issues." A staff report says open drug dealing has made Wesley Street "an urban dead zone." It says an increase in campsites, stolen shopping carts, discarded needles, vandalism, garbage and the misuse of public washrooms has led to a tripling of clean up costs in less than three years. The report says the COVID-19 pandemic has left boarded-up businesses and empty parking lots vulnerable to homeless and transient individuals, further stretching the demand on police and bylaw services. Staff is asking council for $187,000 to fund a "Social Disorder Response Team," made up of sanitation crews, parking and bylaw officers and the RCMP. It will be voted on at the special council meeting today.

Meanwhile, city staff isn't the only group asking for money to clean up downtown. The Old City Quarter Association wants city hall to share the cost of providing private security and running a call centre for complaints. In a letter to council, the group writes: " Since the middle of March, there have been very few residents and no business activity on downtown streets. At the same time, the homeless population has continued to grow in this neighbourhood resulting in a rapidly deteriorating environment. Residents and tenants no longer feel safe, nor do they enjoy the changing character of the neighbourhood. Both new and longer-term community members are choosing to leave. This represents the undoing of many years of determined community effort to revitalize the Old City Quarter and all of downtown Nanaimo." The group estimates it will cost up to $30,000 to fund the plan for six months, and it's asking the city to split that bill.

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

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