(Editor’s note: This letter was sent to the provincial government and shared with Pique.)
Throughout this week, you have asked the citizens of British Columbia to do more to bend the curve of cases.
While I have no doubt a minority of British Columbians could be doing more to help fight this pandemic, I’m not sure what more most of us can do. We’ve self-isolated, worn masks, worked from home, eliminated travel, seen our careers falter, suffered financially and lost jobs, become part-time teachers, cut off social ties at the expense of our mental wellbeing, fallen ill, turned to alcohol and drugs to cope, and made the biggest sacrifice of all, losing loved ones to COVID-19.
I myself have: spent hundreds of volunteer hours advising various groups in the Ministry of Health; talked to young adults about their concerns around the pandemic; guided family, friends, colleagues, and students through their challenges; been verbally attacked for advocating mask use; had my heart broken as I watched my teenage kids miss important social milestones; and gone through numerous days when thoughts of self-harm entered my mind.
Your appeal for us to do more reminds me that we should always look in the mirror and be the change we want to see.
As you know, December was a catastrophic month in the province for COVID-19 deaths. Our average of 15 COVID-19 deaths per day was equivalent to three 737 airplanes crashing in December alone. Our per-capita death rate in December was greater than Ontario’s. In Taiwan, with a population nearly five times that of B.C., there have only been seven deaths in total. New Zealand has gone two months without community transmission, and the Atlantic provinces have some of the lowest rates in the world.
For some reason, B.C. has lagged in adopting technology and pivoting to the latest science. You were slow to acknowledge asymptomatic spread; we were the second-last province to implement a mask mandate, despite months of supporting research; and it wasn’t until Jan. 5, 2021 the BC Centre for Disease Control acknowledged that COVID-19 can be spread through small droplets (aerosols) and float in the air.
As you ask us to do more, there is much more you can do for us.
Increased testing: Early in the pandemic, it became clear widespread testing, tracing, and individual isolation was essential to blunting the pandemic. At the end of the summer, Premier [John] Horgan promised 20,000 tests per day by winter, an achievable target based on existing lab capacity. Yet, four months later, we’re barely able to reach half that number.
Implement a contact-tracing app: Last April, the BC Ministry of Health began developing outlines for a contract-tracing app. Ten months later, we still don’t have such an app and we’re one of only two provinces not using the national contact-tracing app. This is not due to a lack of technical expertise: B.C. has some of the best health and technology professionals in the world. A contact-tracing app would support the work of our overstretched manual contact-tracers and minimize the spread of outbreaks.
Rapid testing in long-term care (LTC) and high-risk workplaces: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has long recommended rapid testing to minimize outbreaks in LTC facilities; so too has the federal government, with its recent report by the Testing and Screening Expert Advisory Panel. A pilot project led by a respirologist at St. Paul’s Hospital found such testing to be 75-per-cent accurate overall and nearly 100 per cent accurate in individuals with symptoms, according to CBC. Implementation of rapid testing could have reduced the massive number of deaths in the Little Mountain Place long-term care home outbreak. As demonstrated in Nova Scotia, accordng to The Globe and Mail, these tests are also easily administered by non-health professionals. Public-health leaders mention concerns that LTC staff will take fewer other precautions following a negative test; a concept referred to as “risk compensation,” yet there is no evidence to support this supposition. In fact, evidence exists to the contrary, according to The BMJ. As a result, more than a million of these test kits, which expire this fall, have sat in storage since early November, instead of being used to save lives.
Support schools that want a mask mandate: Transmission among students and from students to staff is low as long as all recommended public-health measures are followed. However, many classrooms are unable to have students physically distance and the U.S. CDC has recommended universal mask use in schools, according to The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Your refusal to adopt public-health measures that have proven successful elsewhere has likely led to untold numbers of additional cases and deaths. With the emergence of new, and more-robust, variants, we cannot afford to wait. We also cannot hold out hope for vaccines to save us in the short term. As recent days have proven, we can expect delays in vaccine delivery and distribution here in B.C. and around the globe.
By implementing the four simple steps detailed above, cases and deaths will go down across the province. This will allow restrictions to ease and the economy to flourish, because jurisdictions that have taken a more science-based and aggressive stand have had better economic outcomes.
We are in the midst of the biggest crisis since the Second World War. As B.C. residents, we all seek the same goal and, just as you expect more from us, we expect more from you.
Scott Lear // PhD
Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences Simon Fraser University
