B.C.’s top doctor says some form of restrictions because of COVID-19 will likely be in place until at least the summer.
Dr. Bonnie Henry says that is as 507 of BC’s 1,013 cases of the novel coronavirus have fully recovered as of Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s less likely that we’re going to be able to get back to full normal life – which I miss a lot – before at least the summer, and then we need to start preparing ourselves for the potential of a second wave in the fall,” she said. “We need to put every possible effort into development of a vaccine.”
Henry says the restrictions will be the new-normal until a vaccine is developed – which could be up to 18 months away – or if enough people get sick for there to be immunity in the community.
“I don’t believe we will have all of these restrictions for that period of time,” Henry added. “What I do know is this is a critical part of our first wave.”
She says the severity of that wave will depend on how people comply with the public health orders – including physical distancing and avoiding large gatherings – noting that the next few weeks will be critical in determining what the future will look like.
“Infectious disease outbreaks do come in waves,” Henry added said. “There are many different factors but part of is is how we respond to them and we’ve seen in other countries that we do reach a peak and start to see things coming down.”
Henry says once the current wave has passed, the province will begin to look at ways to reduce restrictions and focus on containing individual imported cases and clusters of the virus, as was the situation about six weeks ago.
Health Minister Adrian Dix added there is ‘zero chance’ that any orders will be lifted by the end of April.
“What it looks like in May or June or July is harder to say and a lot of it depends on responding with a 100 per cent effort to bend the curve,” he said. “But this is going to be a challenge for a long time.”
There are 482 confirmed, active cases in the province with 128 in hospital, 61 in intensive care.
