Vaccine passports stay in place in B.C. while youth sports tournaments set to return: Dr. Henry

Despite high hospitalization rates, the curve of new COVID-19 infections is on a downward trend in B.C., provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said today.

“We do continue to see a gradual decline in our case rates over time and the levelling off of the test positivity rate,” Dr. Henry said during a news briefing today, Jan. 25. “We are on that downward trend in community transmission but the number of people in hospital remains high, the highest it’s ever been.”

That means, on the one hand, youth sports tournaments can resume as of Feb. 1.

But the use of vaccine passports has been extended to June 30 in order to keep businesses functioning. Dr. Henry does hope that can be changed before June 30 if cases decline enough.

READ MORE: COVID-19: A timeline of the pandemic and how it changed our lives over the past two years

She also said that the recommendation that children aged five to 11 “may” get vaccinated has been strengthened to “should” get immunized.

That’s because, while children that age usually don’t get severe illness from COVID, the Omicron variant is putting more of them in hospital and vaccinations do help protect them.

Children will need to wait for eight weeks for a second dose and those who have already been vaccinated will get invitations to get a second dose when their time comes.

While Omicron has been able to penetrate the protection of vaccines for people with two doses, getting a booster shot increases the chance of not getting infected by 50% to 60%, Dr. Henry said.

Changes will be coming next week to the orders governing long-term and assisted care homes and a town hall meeting will be held tomorrow night for people in the child care industry after changes to their guidelines were made last week.

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