BC ends COVID-19 public health emergency

After over four years, the COVID-19 public health emergency was officially lifted today in an announcement made by provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix.

The provincial public health emergency was first declared March 17, 2020. The World Health Organization dropped the global health emergency in May 2023, though it is still considered a global pandemic.

Henry said that after reviewing the current data, including hospitalization rates, vaccination rates, and the evolution of variants of concern, she was confident that there was no longer a need for a public health emergency in BC.

Henry clarified that COVID is still with us and will be for “the foreseeable future,” pointing to US President Joe Biden’s recent bout of COVID as an example of its continued presence.

“While COVID-19 has not gone, we do have higher levels of protection within our health-care system, as I said, and in our communities,” said Henry. “If we look at the other places across Canada and across North America, these high rates of protection from vaccination and from the hybrid immunity have made a tremendous difference across British Columbia.”

With the end of the public health emergency comes the lifting of few remaining restrictions from the pandemic era—the most significant being the requirement for all health-care workers to be vaccinated.

Both Dix and Henry defended the policy, saying it was made during the rollout of the vaccines, when the Delta variant was overwhelming BC’s health-care system and herd immunity was low.

“The mandate was instrumental in protecting health-care workers against severe COVID-19 illness and complications, reducing the transmission to vulnerable patients and care home residents and supporting the resiliency of our health-care system,” said Dix. “It was the right decision then.”

Dox encouraged those health-care workers who lost their job due to lack of vaccination to apply to open positions—but they will be required to report their immunization records for all relevant vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, mumps, and COVID-19. They are not required to have these vaccines up to date for employment. However, Dix said some hospitals may have their own vaccination policies that they may enforce.

“The intention of this registry is to protect people to ensure that the health-care system can best respond to challenges in the future, and to and to increase rates of vaccinations across categories quickly and efficiently,” said Dix.

Unvaccinated health-care workers will still be subject to restrictions depending on the situation—if COVID deaths pick up again or another disease outbreak occurs, Dix said they “may be required to follow appropriate measures, which could include masking, modified duties, or exclusion from work.”

Henry said the decision to lift the public health emergency was delayed as her team anticipated a spring wave of COVID. Now, she says, the rate of COVID has gone down—over the last week, fewer than 200 people were hospitalized in BC with COVID, with 11 in intensive care.

“There is an obligation under the Public Health Act for me to lift orders as soon as reasonably possible when the conditions are no longer met,” she added.

Henry said there’s still a chance that COVID cases could surge in the fall, along with other respiratory viruses and influenza, which could lead to the return of some restrictions.

Though she says the Omicron variant—still the most prevalent variant of concern—has not mutated as quickly as expected, it is still inevitable that it will change over time. She said it’s possible that “we'll need to have different varieties of the vaccine” as the situation evolves.