Children aged 5 and up added to B.C.’s mask mandate

• 340,000 children between the ages of 5 and 11 in B.C.
• Parents can pre-register their children on the province’s Get Vaccinated website

British Columbia’s public mask mandate has been changed to make it mandatory for everyone five and older to wear a face covering in all indoor public spaces.

Previously, the mask rule for public spaces only applied to children aged 12 and older.

Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer, announced the change at a news conference Tuesday, Oct.12, saying B.C.’s COVID-19 case numbers are stable, but “still very high.”

“For youth, whether taking the school bus or the city bus, the rules will be the same,” Henry stated.

“And I just want to say how impressed I am — I continue to be amazed at the adaptability and resilience of children across this province — and many of them have told me they know how to wear a mask now and it’s something they do to keep themselves and their families safe, and I just want to say thank you,” said the province’s top doctor.

Vaccines for younger children

Henry also said the province is getting ready to provide vaccines for children 5 to 11 years old as soon as the vaccines are approved by Health Canada.

“We may have that important vaccine available to us as early as early November,” she said.

Parents can pre-register their children on the province’s Get Vaccinated website.

There are about 340,000 children between the ages of 5 and 11 in B.C.

Henry said B.C. is looking at whether third doses are needed for other populations, other than for those who are immune-compromised and residents of long-term care who were previously approved for the booster shots.

“We are looking at other populations and we’ll be gathering that data and looking at how we may roll those out in the future,” Henry said.

Henry stated they are concerned about numbers in the northern B.C. where COVID-19 is “spreading at higher than the average rate,” mostly in unvaccinated young people.

New measures to break that chain of spread are being considered, but in the meantime, residents of Northern Health are encouraged to “get back to the basics,” by washing hands, keeping safe distances, and wearing a mask.

Health Minister Adrian Dix said they are seeing the effects of the serious COVID-19 cases in the north on the health care system, with patients having to be transferred to other facilities, including to Vancouver and Victoria.

He said 55 critical care patients have recently been transferred from Northern Health to hospitals in other areas of B.C., and 43 were positive for COVID-19 and 42 were not fully vaccinated.

Dix said 88.8 per cent of all eligible residents 12 and older have had one vaccine dose while 82.6 per cent have had two doses.

“That’s impressive by any standard, but we simply need it to be higher,” Dix remarked.

Meantime, Henry said she is “actively working” on updating capacity limits for events, adding they will be making a decision on that by the end of this week.

Henry said almost all of the new cases in B.C. have been the Delta variant which she said “spreads rapidly when it finds a toehold when people are not protected by vaccination.”

Pete McIntyre Vernon Matters