Image Credit: Flickr / Government of BC

By James Peters

Two & Out

PETERS: It’s time to consider tailoring our pandemic restrictions by region

Sep 25, 2020 | 2:58 PM

YOU’VE HEARD Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry say it repeatedly: COVID-19 is in every region of B.C.

She could very well have said, “There are tall buildings in every region of B.C.”

Technically, yes, but we know very well where most of the tall buildings are congregated.

The disparity between the Lower Mainland and the rest of British Columbia when it comes to COVID-19 is almost as stark as the political disparity between urban and rural B.C.

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On one day last week, the Fraser Health area, which encompasses most of the Lower Mainland with the exception of Vancouver and Richmond, saw more than 100 cases on its own. Vancouver Coastal saw more than 50.

That same day, there were only four cases in the Interior. Vancouver Island had only one.

In total, 87 per cent of all COVID-19 cases in B.C. have been found in either the Fraser or Vancouver Coastal health authorities.

If you don’t like case counts because of how they are influenced by testing, then look at hospitalizations and deaths. The disparity is even more stark.

As of a week ago, a total of 685 British Columbians had been hospitalized with COVID-19. Eighty-seven per cent of those have happened in the Lower Mainland.

Of the 220 deaths at that point, 212 had taken place in the Lower Mainland. That’s 96 per cent.

So COVID-19 has hit the Lower Mainland disproportionately hard.

Is it time, then, to consider different levels of restrictions in different areas of the province?

Could the Interior, for example, advance to the next level of pandemic re-opening, while the Lower Mainland stays in a more restrictive phase?

Vancouver Island has an even stronger argument for this idea than we do.

Residents of these regions could really use a taste of life a little closer to normalcy.

Certainly, we could see another COVID-19 outbreak in the Interior, like we saw after numbskulls decided to party in Kelowna around Canada Day.

That could cause a quick return to a more restrictive phase for us.

We have to get used to the idea that COVID-19 is here for the long term. That in mind, treating the different regions of the province as having distinctly different conditions is at least worth consideration.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.