Morning Update for April 14, 2020
Dr. Bonnie Henry. 📷: Province of British Columbia (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
NANAIMO —The latest COVID-19 numbers show no slowdown in the number of deaths. Eleven people died over the weekend, bringing BC's total to 69. All were over the age of 70 and most were from long term care facilities on the lower mainland. There were 3 new cases of the virus reported in the Island Health region, totaling 87. Province-wide there are just under 1500 cases, including 45 new ones reported over the weekend. One of those cases is a temporary foreign worker at the Bylands Nursery in West Kelowna. The nursery was already under quarantine because of an outbreak that began in late March when 19 migrant workers tested positive for COVID-19. Since then, the federal government ordered all temporary foreign workers to be quarantined for 14 days after arriving in Canada. Yesterday, it announced it will pay employers up to $1500 per worker to ensure they are paid during their quarantine, and to help with the cost of providing physical distancing space in living quarters.
BC's Minister of Health and the Provincial Health officer are downplaying concerns about ferry travel, saying they believe most long-weekend travellers had good reason to take the ferry. Dr. Bonnie Henry says many were post-secondary students returning home at the end of their school year, while others were commuters whose numbers usually increase on the weekend. Minister Adrian Dix pointed to numbers provided by BC ferries that show Easter weekend travel on the major routes was only 8 per cent of the total from last year. Travel on the Southern Gulf Island routes was 80 per cent lower than the same period last year. Henry says she is very pleased with how new border regulations are being implemented. She says 1700 people returned to BC from international travel last weekend. All but 13 of them had the required self-isolation plans in place. Those without plans were provided accommodation.
A federal government announcement about new portable COVID-19 test kits will have little effect in BC. Yesterday Ottawa announced a Canadian firm will produce 14,000 portable test kits per month. The kits will help remote communities that have to wait days or even a week to get test results back from labs that are far away. The new kits can produce test results on the spot. However, BC's Provincial Health officer says it's unlikely BC will get to use any of them before the summer. Dr. Bonnie Henry says a piece of equipment needed to read the portable tests is will not available to BC until then. However, Henry says BC has its own version of the portable test kit that it is deploying to several small and remote communities this week.
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