While details of what the summer in British Columbia may look like under the “new normal” will be announced by Premier John Horgan Wednesday (May 6), Dr. Bonnie Henry gave some indications Tuesday (May 5).
During her daily news conference, Dr. Henry, B.C.'s provincial health officer, said it will be very challenging to actually get new cases of the virus down to zero through the summer.
“Our control measures will be to ensure that we can increase our social connectedness that we need so much in our lives, increase our economic drivers and the things that we're doing in our community within the boundaries that we talked about with our modelling yesterday,” Dr. Henry said.
“We cannot, right now, afford to go back to where we were in December, 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 and it's going to remain that way through the summer and into next fall.”
Currently, gatherings and events in B.C. with more than 50 people are banned under a provincial health order that was put in place on March 16.
On Tuesday, Dr. Henry announced just eight new cases of the virus had been identified in B.C. over the past 24 hours, the smallest jump in cases since mid-March. She said quickly identifying new cases in the coming months will be key to controlling the spread.
“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,” she said. “Making sure we have those safe things in our restaurants, in our businesses, in our essential businesses like our grocery stores and poultry producers, so we're protected.”
She added that international travel will not be in many people's plans for the coming months.
“This summer is one where I think we need to start thinking about looking close to home to what 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,” she said.
“We're learning every day about this virus, about who it's affecting, about how its being transmitting about what are the most effective ways to prevent it, about new medications to treat it, and we are getting closer every day to having a vaccine.”
Premier Horgan is expected to speak Wednesday at 3 p.m. about reducing virus-related restrictions in the province.
