Wednesday March 13, 2024 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
This week the BC Government quietly issued a statement for the National Day of Observance on this week’s four-year anniversary of the declaration of the COVID pandemic. Premier David Eby was quoted as saying: “Four years ago, the world was irrevocably changed….around the globe, we witnessed a profound change to the everyday lives of people who were being confronted with a dangerous new disease.”
The COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) coronavirus was first detected in December 2019 in China. By early January 2020 the BC Health Ministry and Provincial Health Officer were already holding press conferences about the mysterious new virus. During February 2020 it was obvious things needed to ramp up. On March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 pandemic, and in BC a State of Emergency for COVID-19 as a pandemic and public health emergency was put into place on March 17, 2020.
Due to COVID-19 there were 58,475 deaths in Canada, including more than 6,600 people in British Columbia. “We acknowledge and hold space for the loved ones they left behind and the people who continue to face health challenges because of the virus,” said Eby in a statement on March 11 — four years after the pandemic was first declared.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said in the March 11 release that BC must recognize “the imperative to fortify our health-care infrastructure against future threats”, adding that bolstering the BC health care system reflects a dedication to the well-being of people in BC but also reaffirms our resolve to safeguard public health and “ensuring that communities around the province are resilient and prepared for whatever challenges lie ahead”.
Provincial Health Officer Dr Bonnie Henry was quote this week as saying that so much has been learned about the SARS COV-2 virus and how to best protect communities. “We have also learned about each other and the importance of community, of family, of neighbours and of caring for those who are most vulnerable,” said Dr Henry. She added: “The pandemic challenged everyone in B.C. in unimaginable ways.”
Difficult memories, quiet moving forward:
This week — other than the above statement — community discussion about COVID and the pandemic has been almost negligible. People are understandably exhausted from the intense experience of 2020 and 2021, and since then the economic impacts and recovery phase that continues to be challenging for many. Things we experienced may still take time to reveal their impacts.
Forever now a household name, Dr Bonnie Henry was not trotted out to make a statement about the COVID pandemic this week. Earlier in this year’s winter respiratory illness season, she addressed media with reminders about vaccination, something that Health Minister Dix also reiterates whenever he gets the chance.
Honoured to have been a part of it:
A tough time, but a memorable and impactful one full of extraordinary circumstances and decisions, the COVID phase is something that Health Miniser Adrian Dix says he was “honoured to be a part of”.
Today Health Minister Adrian Dix was asked by Island Social Trends for his quick summary of ‘good and bad’ about the BC experience with the COVID pandemic.
Top of mind for Dix was gratitude: “I feel a deep sense of gratitude to people in BC for what they did for each other.” He said that British Columbians “responded better to COVID than any other jurisdiction in North America”. He said that wasn’t just because of what the provincial government did but because of “the actions people took”.
“In that time we made some extraordinarily difficult decisions,” said Dix. He itemized that in March 2020 decisions that “effectively delayed 30,000 surgeries all of which were medically necessary and needed”. He said about that decision about surgeries: “was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever been involved in”.
“What we said to people is that we would do the surgeries and we did them all. And we reduced the surgical wait list by adding surgical services. A couple of weeks ago we did 7,915 surgeries,” the health minister said today, noting that during the pandemic it was around 1,000 per week. “Every one of those surgeries is important,” he emphasized.
“The legacy we left by building out the vaccination system with community pharmacies but also an appointment booking system that was the best in the country,” said Dix with pride and conviction.”Now we have less COVID than Ontario in the last number of months. While people want to move past it, the reality is … (COVID) still has the capacity to make people ill,” he said, adding that there are 100 people in hospital across BC today with COVID.
“We had two and half times the level of vaccination that Ontario had. And that just wasn’t because British Columbians are more committed to vaccination … but because we had a system that made it easy to book an appointment and get an appointment quickly.”
Now we can do more:
“Now we can do more. That was true on the flu as well. It’s going to aid us when the need for vaccination and the need for it to be easy for people to do, is there,” said Dix today. “We have to acknowledge, it’s not what we’re used to.”
“We have to acknowledge the loss of people,” he said, while also articulating other types of loss. For example “the people who devoted their lives to high school basketball and missed their Grade 12 tournament, people who love to go out — seniors who weren’t able to attend a memorial service for a loved one”.
“It’s not just the loss of people who lost their lives or were hurt or were very ill or are still dealing with the effects of COVID. It was the losses for everyone’s health, and the sacrifices that everyone made. And for my part, I’m just honoured to have been part of it,” said Dix, earmarking the COVID pandemic as a significant extended event in the historical pathway of British Columbia.
Premier’s unwavering support:
Despite what some in BC might have thought about the province’s COVID response, for sure Premier David Eby was impressed as seen in his cabinet appointments in December 2022 a no-nonsense reappointment of Dix as the health minister going forward.
Robust action going forward:
Dix has since that time continued to focused on capital investments for cancer services and hospitals, modernization of various services that will both save health care dollars and improve health are outcomes (e.g. replacing PAP smear appointments with at-home HPV tests via postal mail), building new ways to recruit, train and retain health care workers, and improving negotiated contracts with doctors and midwives in ways that will improve primary care provider retention within the health care system.
Seniors in focus:
Dix has also addressed the many long-term components of dealing with aging-in-place for seniors as a way to improve health outcomes as well as lessening the financial burden of providing long-term care facilities and staffing. Today he described seniors as “people who have been contributing to our communities over many years and now deserve to be seen”. The role and importance of seniors in broader society was arguably an important social change in BC as a result of the pandemic.
===== RELATED:
- Jan 2024 respiratory season update emphasizes vaccination (January 10, 2024)
- COVID three years later: long-term impacts among Canadians (December 8, 2023)
- Dr Henry respiratory season update Nov 10 (November 9, 2023)
- Record number of surgeries in BC health-care this summer (September 19, 2023)
- More respiratory season data for COVID, flu & RSV (January 13, 2023)
- COVID shots available at 81 pharmacies on Vancouver Island (January 6, 2022)
- Dr Henry on Christmas Eve: gift of health (December 24, 2021)
- April 15: Today’s COVID Quotes by Dr Henry & Minister Dix (April 15, 2021)
- Premier’s office outlines 2020 COVID pandemic record on seniors & health care (December 29, 2020)
- Surgical renewal not held back by COVID-19 (September 24, 2020)
- BC ramps up the surgical renewal during COVID (July 21, 2020)
- COVID NEWS ARCHIVE (2020 to present)
===== ISLAND SOCIAL TRENDS – How to be a digital subscriber =====
Bookmark the IslandSocialTrends.ca news portal and be a part of ongoing support for independent journalism! Don’t miss this analysis of local, regional and provincial news — add IslandSocialTrends.ca to your bookmarks (phone and desktop). Visiting the news portal is always free.
Help us keep the lights on! You can also support this Vancouver Island journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. For just $7.25+GST per month, you will receive by email the PDF of our biweekly print edition.
Support journalism that serves your community, by subscribing today.