B.C. will start to ease restrictions in mid-May. Photo: ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
B.C. announced its plan to reopen society this week, but it’s a slow and careful plan. We can start to expand our social circles and businesses can reopen if they can implement social distancing. There won’t be any international travel or conventions until there’s a vaccine, a treatment or community immunity, which could take years.
B.C. had one day this week with only eight new cases, after more than a month with constant double-digit increases. We’re still seeing several deaths each day, but our hospitalization rate is decreasing, so it looks safe to relax the restrictions a bit.
B.C. has 2,218 covid-19 cases, 126 people have died and 76 people are in hospital. There are 650 active cases, down from 679 last week. Canada now has 64,922 cases and 4,408 people have died.
Many of the changes this week are related to re-opening, but life is nothing like normal. I wonder if we will look back at the ‘90s and first two decades of the 21st century as the glory days – days of inexpensive travel, bustling restaurants, Broadway musicals, mega rock concerts and the like.
Here’s my list of changes for this week:
- B.C. announced its plan to restart elective surgeries. About 30,000 surgeries were postponed in the province since these surgeries were suspended in March. It will take two years to catch up and hundreds of nurses, surgeons and other medical staff will be hired.
-The CD Howe Institute says Canada has entered a recession.
-Thousands of people applied for B.C.’s $1,000 emergency benefit during the first hour it was offered. B.C. Premier John Horgan said more than 400,000 people in B.C. are now unemployed.
-Restaurants Canada said that half of all of Canada’s restaurants may never reopen.
-More than seven million people have received the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), an income support for people who have been laid off due to covid-19.
- More than one-quarter of American workers in some areas are now unemployed, due to covid-19, the New York Times reported. A 15-per-cent unemployment rate is called “Depression-level” in the story.
- The United States has nearly 1.3 million covid-19 cases and nearly 77,000 people have died in two months. Since 2010, the number of Americans who die from the flu in a year ranges from 12,000 to 61,000. The number of Americans who died in the 11-year Vietnam War was 47,434.
-Many states south of the border started to open up, even though government projections show it could mean 2,000 deaths a day by June, as reported by the New York Times.
-The American Supreme Court held its first phone hearing the public listened in. In B.C. last week, Meng Wanzhou’s extradition court case had a phone hearing.
-Carnival Cruise Lines said they would restart some cruises in August. Alaskan cruises out of Vancouver have been cancelled for this summer.
-The Canadian government isn’t sure what to do about its budget for this fiscal year.
-The number of homes that sold in Metro Vancouver in April 2020 was the lowest number since April 1982. For someone who lived in Vancouver in the early ‘80s, that’s a scary reference. The city was in the midst of a housing crash and interest rates were significantly higher than 10 per cent.
- There are reports of a strange illness affecting children that may be related to covid-19.
- Two studies were released about children’s role in spreading the virus. One study found that kids have so many contacts at school that it affects how quickly the virus spreads and the second one found that even if a child is not very ill, they can still have a high viral load and spread the virus.
- Quebec has pushed back its planned date for schools and retailers to open in Montreal because the new cases of covid-19 are still very high.
Next Friday starts the May long weekend – Victoria Day – and, if cases remain low, after that B.C. will start to reopen. Let’s hope the next seven days bring good news.
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