Tuesday December 29, 2020 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke, B.Sc., editor | Island Social Trends
Today the Premier’s office has proactively issued a news release saying it has been taking “actions to protect seniors and improve health care” to help BC fight the global pandemic.
This relatively defensive (unprompted) “for the record” statement comes as there is evidence of wear-and-tear on frontline health-care staff as well as the glaring evidence of long-term care failures as seen in the number of COVID-related deaths in those facilities (over 80 percent of COVID deaths in BC have happened among residents of long-term care and assisted living).
“The Province took unprecedented action to protect seniors and deliver better, faster care in 2020 to keep people safe, healthy and secure,” was the opening point in the today’s statement from the premier’s office.
The statement which appears to be wrapping a year-end bow around performance of public health and health-care makes no mention about specific public health policies like wearing masks and does not specifically mention the public education system. The focus is on seniors, long-term care, and acute care.
Taking the lead from public health during pandemic:
“Since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit British Columbia, the government has followed the advice of public health officials and taken the strong action needed to slow the spread of the virus and protect those most vulnerable,” it was stated by Premier Horgan in today’s post-Christmas statement.
Horgan has repeatedly stated the obvious quite soon after the SARS-CoV-2 (aka COVID-19 virus) took hold in BC, i.e. that the virus (and its impacts) keep changing, and thereby so have the decisions and actions taken by government as a way to keep pace and perhaps even get ahead of the worst aspects of the crisis.
The province’s pandemic coordination plan was announced on March 6, the pandemic was declared on March 17 and a state of emergency was first declared on March 18 and has been renewed every two weeks ever since.
The balance or give-and-take between politics and public health was first examined by Island Social Trends back in April. Clearly most politicians don’t have (or would be expected to have) the science background to make high-impact decisions without input from public health. But the sociopolitical and economic impacts of public health decisions rest back on the shoulders and performance record of the government.
Health-care actions taken by government during COVID:
Today’s statement from the Premier’s office itemizes these actions in health-care as taken by the BC Government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic:
- protecting seniors in long-term care with a single-site directive that limited workers to one facility and raised wages for thousands of workers;
- hiring 7,000 new health-care workers in long-term care homes and 1,200 contact tracers to help stop further spread in the community [editor’s note: there has been a stated goal to hire 7,000 new health-care workers for long-term care but that could still be mostly in the training stage toward achieving that full complement of new staff; as for contact tracers, Health Minister Dix has over several months outlined the application/interview/hiring numbers];
- beginning an immunization strategy to protect vulnerable seniors, starting with front-line workers who care for those most at risk [editor’s note — the rollout of COVID vaccinations in BC began the week of Dec 14 in the Vancouver lower mainland and the week of Dec 21 on Vancouver Island]; and
- helping rural, remote and Indigenous communities access better care with expanded flight and ambulance options, virtual access to medical professionals, culturally safe care and contact tracing.
Lives upside down:
“The global pandemic has turned our lives upside down and shown us that we are at our best when we work together to take care of each other,” said Premier John Horgan.
“There’s more work to do, but our investments to deliver better care and support seniors will help protect people through the pandemic and beyond. We are committed every day to keeping people healthy and safe, and building a recovery that includes everyone across BC,” said Premier Horgan in today’s written statement from his office.
Pre-COVID issues:
Building on the success in cutting MRI wait times in half throughout the province, the government is investing to improve health care and support seniors’ health needs by:
- providing access to better care, closer to home with 21 new urgent and primary care centres in communities throughout BC with more on the way [editor’s note: a new UPCC opened in Langford two years ago, a flavour of UPCC was created for Sooke last year, and a upcoming UPCC is underway for Esquimalt;
- building a new second hospital to Surrey, delivering a bigger, bolder plan for the new Richmond Hospital tower, adding a new patient care tower in Prince George and continuing progress on a new hospital for the Cowichan Valley;
- expanding cancer care by adding PET/CT scanners in Kelowna and Victoria (as mentioned by Horgan on September 28 during the recent provincial election), planning a new regional cancer care centre at the new Surrey hospital and launching a new lung cancer screening program;
- supporting 500 new long-term care beds in the Interior, which is the largest one-time increase in beds in that region in over 15 years; and
- providing patients safe care in the comfort of their homes and taking pressure off hospitals by launching the Hospital at Home program [editor’s note: The Hospital at Home program has a pilot project underway at Victoria General Hospital, which is still open input from people who live within 16 km of the hospital, to December 31].
