Vaccinations
There was some confusion in the pharmacies about whether eligibility was based on age or year-of-birth. For example, if you turn 40 in November 2021, are you eligible? It’s year-of-birth, so yes.
Apparently there have been 39 cases of the B.1.617 (Indian) variant in BC as of April 4. Not much is known about it yet, but it’s got the L542 mutation, like the “California” variants B.1.427/B.1.429 and from what this paper says, the B.1.1.7 is more transmissible and more vax-evasive. The takeaway I get is that we should keep our eye on it but not panic.
Money
The NDP’s proposed budget has a bunch of money marked for COVID relief in one form or another:
- $100M for marketing to the tourism industry
- $20M for tourism infrastructure (e.g. to upgrade destinations or upgrade airports)
- $50M for restaurants / hospitality businesses for “circuit breaker” grants
- $6M for arts infrastructure/capital improvements
- $195M for grants to businesses that can show a big loss due to the pandemic
Checkpoints
Minister Farnsworth says that Fraser Health and VCH will be treated as one unit as far as the travel restrictions go, and that checkpoints will likely be at ferry terminals and highways leaving the Lower Mainland.
Transmission
An update on Prince Rupert from Justin McElroy, the God of COVID in BC Charts!
Note1: vaccines work! Note2: more evidence that it takes more like three weeks after your shot for your immune system to fully rev up.
Statistics
+862 cases, +7 deaths, +42,230 first doses, +72 second doses, 11332 AZ (a record!).
Currently 483 in hospital / 164 in ICU, 8,906 active cases, 13,135 under monitoring, 111,039 recovered.
We have 370,464 doses in the fridges, which we’ll use up in 8.8 days at the current rate. We have injected more doses than we had received 9 days ago.
We have 208,864 mRNA doses in the fridges, which we’ll use up in 6.7 days at today’s rate. We have injected more mRNA doses than we had received 7 days ago.
We have 161,600 AZ doses in the fridges, which we’ll use up in 14.3 days at today’s rate.
Charts
