B-C’s provincial health officer says her order directing school districts to collect information on the vaccination status of school staff would make it easier for any vaccine mandates to be put in place. Dr. Bonnie Henry says the order makes the collection of the data a legal requirement, but school districts are the employers so any decision about mandates is up to them. Henry also says B-C is expected to get four-thousand doses of the COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid in the coming days and will be prioritizing which patients have access to the limited supplies. She says the medication, which comes in pill form for adults with mild to moderate symptoms, would be aimed at keeping people out of hospital, but there are multiple considerations like age and whether a patient has underlying chronic conditions. The province has recorded another one-thousand 975 cases of COVID-19, but the Health Ministry says that number is provisional and up-to-date numbers will be provided when they’re available. Two more people have died. The province says 854 patients with COVID-19 are in hospital, 112 of them in intensive care.
