BC could adopt similar policy for small vaccinated groups as in the US: Dr. Henry

New guidelines from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for those who have gone through the full COVID-19 vaccination process are “reasonable,” according to  BC’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.

And during a press conference Monday afternoon, Henry predicted BC’s post-vaccination guidelines would be “very similar” to those south of the border.

On Monday morning, the CDC announced that those who’ve been fully vaccinated and waited two weeks after their final shot can:

• gather indoors with fully vaccinated people without wearing a mask; and
• gather indoors with unvaccinated people from one other household (for example, visiting with relatives who all live together) without masks, unless any of those people or anyone they live with has an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19.

If a fully vaccinated person has been around someone with COVID-19, they no longer need to isolate or get tested unless they display symptoms. However, if one lives with someone who has COVID-19, they should still stay away from others for 14 days and get tested, even if they don’t have symptoms.

The CDC also noted that people should still continue to wear a mask, stay six feet apart from others, and avoid crowds and poorly ventilated spaces until more is known about the effectiveness of the vaccine.

For her part, Henry noted that as it currently stands, BC is “not at the point right now where we have enough of the people who are at risk immunized that we can have overall guidance.”

Still, she called the CDC’s announcement “a very good example of what we can look forward to as more people are protected in the coming months.”

• See also:
  • BC health officials report 1,462 new COVID-19 cases, 11 deaths since Friday
  • Canada designates National Day of Observance for COVID-19
  • Over 1.7M calls received at BC COVID-19 vaccination call centres Monday morning

Henry said that as of Monday, there have been 1,462 new test-positive COVID-19 cases since Friday, bringing the total number of recorded cases in the province to 84,569.

Broken down by health region, this equates to 407 new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 802 new cases in the Fraser Health region, 72 in the Island Health region, 79 in the Interior Health region, and 102 in the Northern Health region.

There were also 11 new COVID-19-related deaths, for a total of 1,391 deaths in British Columbia.

There are 4,854 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, with 8,723 people under active public health monitoring as a result of identified exposure to known cases. A total of 78,237 people who tested positive have recovered.

There are 144 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 variants of concern in the province, for a total of 394 cases. Of these, 87 are active and the remaining cases have recovered.

With files from Alyssa Therrien