To Premier David Eby of the NDP, Ms. Sonia Furstenau of the Green Party and Mr. John Rustad of the Conservatives
Dear Premier Eby, Ms. Furstenau and Mr. Rustad,
Canadians are dying at record rates. ”We're currently seeing nearly as many excess deaths each year in Canada (~40K annually) as Canadian deaths in all of WWIl.” Dr. Tara Moriarty, Infectious Diseases researcher and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry tweeted last month. COVID-19 is Responsible for approximately 40,000 deaths a year in Canada. COVID-19 is causing enormous levels of illness and disability amongst Canadians. The Summer 2024 Statistics Canada report showed that 1 in 6 people now have long COVID. The report stated "Considering the average infection acquired SARS CoV-2 seroprevalence in Canada's 10 provinces was-81.8% as of the end of October 2023 (Swail et al.,2023), the potential burden of PCC [Post Covid Conditions] on afflicted individuals and their families, the healthcare system and the economy, through lost productivity, could be substantial."
Here in BC this past August 1 in 25 people had a COVID-19 infection and COVID-19 hospitalisation cases were back up to January 2024 levels. The wait times in BC hospital emergency departments exceeding 10 hours have become commonplace. There are regular closures of emergency departments throughout the province. The emergency physicians from Surrey Memorial hospital put their jobs on the line to tell the public that conditions were so dire they declared 30 “Code Oranges” this last year. Code oranges indicate that the emergency department is not safe to keep operating.
Clearly COVID is not over and until we bring in measures to mitigate this airborne virus, our healthcare system will continue to be in crisis.
Protect Our Province BC is making the following demands:
1. Universal Masking in Healthcare Settings
Universal masking, with N95 or equivalent respirators, in hospitals and healthcare settings including doctors’ offices, dentists’ offices, pharmacies, labs, X-Ray facilities, etc.to protect some of the most vulnerable populations in our communities from deadly viruses like COVID-19.
Masks, especially N95 masks/ respirators, work. They are a crucial protection against airborne viruses like COVID-19.
Mask mandates were lifted in BC in April 2023 but had to be re-instated in October 2023 when hospitals and emergency departments were overrun with COVID-19, influenza and RSV. Don’t let this happen again!
Masks will help reduce doctor and nursing shortages in BC by preventing healthcare workers from becoming sick from COVID-19 and other airborne infections.
2. Test, Trace and Isolate COVID Positive People
People with active infections with COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses should not be allowed to go to work to sicken their co-workers. This is of critical importance in hospitals and healthcare facilities where our most vulnerable populations are located. Caregivers should be instructed to rapid test their children and keep them home from schools and daycares.
An October 2024 study found that simple measures such as testing patients on admission and providing hospital staff N95 masks were cost effective in reducing hospital acquired infections and significantly reduced deaths.
3. Free Rapid Antigen Tests for the Public
The federal free supplies will soon no longer be available and PCR testing in BC is limited to patients who are admitted to hospital or living in long-term care facilities.
This is an equity issue. Fewer people will be able to test if the tests are not provided for free.
4. Universal Masking and Clean Air in Schools
Take action and actually implement the May 2024 VCH and Fraser Health recommendations for “Ventilation In Schools and Childcare Facilities” in May of 2024, to improve HVAC’s to ASHRAE 241 standards and decrease infections with COVID-19 and other viruses.
Universal masking has been shown to decrease transmission of COVID-19 and other pathogens that transmit through the air. It is a safe, universally accessible and inexpensive protection that can be implemented immediately.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began,children have had increased illness rates and as a result they have also had increased school absence rates. 70% of COVID-19 cases are brought by children to households which in turn causes increased levels of disease in the community and leads to an overload of hospitals. Improved ventilation in schools has been found not only to reduce school absences by students and teachers but has also been found to improve test scores in math and reading.
5. Guaranteed 10 Days of Paid Sick Leave.
Provide paid sick leave of at least 10 days so workers will not feel obligated to return to work and spread the infection to their co-workers or patients, as in the case of hospital workers.
This will prevent workers coming to work when sick with COVID-19 due to financial pressure and will prevent employers pressuring workers to return to work while still ill.
6. Public Education about the risks of COVID infections.
Inform the general public that COVID-19 is a dangerous airborne virus. COVID-19 is not a cold but a deadly virus that can damage every single organ in the body and can lead to long term disability in both adults and children.
If handwashing and drawing curtains around hospital beds were effective protections against COVID-19 we would not be seeing such high rates of infections in hospitals and long term care homes. And yet in BC, these are still the two main protective strategies for COVID-19.
In September 2024, the Office of the Chief Science Advisor published a report about Post-COVID-19 Condition (PCC) and Its Continued Impact on Individuals and Society. We concur with the message from the report and the time to act is now:
“Prevention: There are gaps in public messaging about the importance of PCC prevention. PCC preventive actions include avoiding SARS-CoV-2 infection and reinfection through protective behavior, such as isolating when sick to avoid spreading disease and effective masking in crowded spaces, and making it easy to adopt protective measures through steps that government, institutions and employers can take. Equally important is indoor air quality and ventilation to reduce transmission of infectious diseases that transmit through the air, including SARS-CoV-2, influenza and other common respiratory viruses . Adequate ventilation and air filtration is often a key gap in buildings where people gather, including schools.”
Vaccines are a key protection against COVID-19 and PCC. But “COVID-19 vaccination and messaging targeted to priority populations to protect against acute COVID-19 illness may have an unintended consequence of conveying that keeping COVID-19 vaccination up to date for acute and chronic effects is not really necessary for all age groups.”
The public health messaging that COVID-19 is a seasonal virus like influenzae and therefore requires only yearly vaccination has not been substantiated by current scientific evidence that COVID-19 vaccines begin to wane by 3-4 months after vaccination.
This confused messaging has led in BC to less than 20% of adults being up to date with their COVID vaccines. In children, the rate of COVID immunizations is shockingly low with 1.9 % of children 4 and under, 4 % of children from ages 5-11 and 6.1 % of children 12-17 w fully vaccinated.
We urge the party who wins the upcoming BC provincial election to take the actions we have outlined above to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This is the first step towards ending the healthcare crisis in BC.
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Protect Our Province BC is a grassroots group of physicians, nurses, health scientists, health policy specialists and community advocates. We are working together to help people in BC stay safe by sharing accurate information about the COVID-19 pandemic in BC, and advocating for policies based on the best available science. Our ultimate goal is to end this pandemic through a vaccine-plus strategy that includes addressing how this virus spreads through aerosols.
