Dr. Bonnie Henry at a press conference at Legislature in Victoria, B.C., on March 1, 2021.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
British Columbia’s top doctor is trying to clamp down on the spread of COVID-19 variants with a new public-health order giving local authorities the power to temporarily close businesses when three or more employees are confirmed to have contracted the virus at work.
At a pandemic briefing that announced a daily record of 1,293 new B.C. cases, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said public-health authority staff will be able to close these businesses for 10 days or longer, with the help of WorkSafeBC inspectors who will execute the temporary closings. The new order does not apply to schools or other essential workplaces such as police stations, hospitals and fire halls, Dr. Henry said Thursday.
She said this new tactic will offer an alternative to the “blunt tool of just closing everything” in an industry when workplace transmission has persisted, noting the recent outlawing of indoor dining at restaurants and bars last week. At larger work sites, a closing may be restricted to one area, Dr. Henry said, using the example of a construction site where one group of trades people might be kept from working while others continue.
COVID-19 news: Updates and essential resources about the pandemic
COVID-19 is caused by a virus called SARS-CoV-2, and as it spread around the world, it mutated into new forms that are more quickly and easily transmitted through small water droplets in the air. Canadian health officials are most worried about variants that can slip past human immune systems because of a different shape in the spiky protein that latches onto our cells. The bigger fear is that future mutations could be vaccine-resistant, which would make it necessary to tweak existing drugs or develop a new “multivalent” vaccine that works against many types, which could take months or years.
Not all variants are considered equal threats: Only those proven to be more contagious or resistant to physical-distancing measures are considered by the World Health Organization to be “variants of concern.” Five of these been found in Canada so far. The WHO refers to them by a sequence of letters and numbers known as Pango nomenclature, but in May of 2021, it also assigned them Greek letters that experts felt would be easier to remember.
ALPHA (B.1.1.7)
- Country of origin: Britain
- Traits: Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are still mostly effective against it, studies suggest, but for full protection, the booster is essential: With only a first dose, the effectiveness is only about 66 per cent.
- Spread in Canada: First detected in Ontario’s Durham Region in December. It is now Canada’s most common variant type. Every province has had at least one case; Ontario, Quebec and the western provinces have had thousands.
BETA (B.1.351)
- Country of origin: South Africa
- Traits: Some vaccines (including Pfizer’s and Oxford-AstraZeneca’s) appear to be less effective but researchers are still trying to learn more and make sure future versions of their drugs can be modified to fight it.
- Spread in Canada: First case recorded in Mississauga in February. All but a few provinces have had at least one case, but nowhere near as many as B.1.1.7.
GAMMA (P.1)
- Country of origin: Brazil
- Traits: Potentially able to reinfect people who’ve recovered from COVID-19.
- Spread in Canada: B.C. has had hundreds of cases, the largest known concentration of P.1 outside Brazil. More outbreaks have been detected in Ontario and the Prairies.
DELTA (B.1.617 AND B.1.617.2)
- Country of origin: India
- Traits: Spreads more easily. Single-dosed people are less protected against it than those with both vaccine doses.
- Spread in Canada: All but a few provinces have recorded cases, but B.C.’s total has been the largest so far.
LAMBDA (C.37)
- Country of origin: Peru
- Traits: Spreads more easily. Health officials had been monitoring it since last August, but the WHO only designated it a variant of concern in June of 2021.
- Spread in Canada: A handful of travel-related cases were first detected in early July.
If I’m sick, how do I know whether I have a variant?
Health officials need to genetically sequence test samples to see whether it’s the regular virus or a variant, and not everyone’s sample will get screened. It’s safe to assume that, whatever the official variant tallies are in your province, the real numbers are higher. But for your purposes, it doesn’t matter whether you contract a variant or not: Act as though you’re highly contagious, and that you have been since before your symptoms appeared (remember, COVID-19 can be spread asymptomatically). Self-isolate for two weeks. If you have the COVID Alert app, use it to report your test result so others who may have been exposed to you will know to take precautions.
Need more answers? Email audience@globeandmail.com
Any workplace that is closed under the order will be listed publicly and have the date of its reopening posted, she added.
“This is just an ongoing part of our program to help control the outbreaks and a more targeted approach to workplaces across the province to help us make sure that we are keeping things functioning as safely as possible,” Dr. Henry said. “They are one of the most common sources of transmission in our province and it is widely across many sectors.”
Over the weekend, B.C. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth warned businesses that defying public-health orders will bring stiffer consequences after two Vancouver restaurants were shut down for proudly flouting the ban on indoor dining.
Ian Tostenson, president of the B.C. Restaurant and Foodservices Association, said Thursday that Dr. Henry’s new order is prudent, but he hopes that any potential closings are reviewed by senior staff at the local health authority.
“There’s a general intent to keep businesses open when they’re safe,” said Mr. Tostenson, who has long lobbied for the restaurant industry.
Still, he said, restaurants are not the problem. He said he and other representatives from his industry met Thursday with staff from Vancouver Coastal Health and were told that local data show the spike in new cases is largely being driven by people gathering in private and then by getting the novel coronavirus at work.
“Restaurants are less than 1 per cent,” he said of the case transmission data he was shown.
Dr. Henry said at Thursday’s briefing that people are driving rising rates of infections by socializing with people outside their households, which is then amplifying the workplace transmissions.
The province has seen daily infections consistently top the 1,000 mark in the past week, with Dr. Henry stating Thursday that B.C. is changing how it screens variants of concern cases given that the majority of new cases are assumed to be these new forms of the virus.
Dr. Henry said two more people have died from the virus, with the death toll in B.C. now at 1,493. She added that 995,001 vaccine doses have been delivered across British Columbia and that people 65 and over are now eligible to get an appointment for their shot.
With a report from The Canadian Press
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Mike Hager