Last updated: August 27, 2023
Our Demands
- Restore universal mask protections to healthcare settings in BC to ensure safe, accessible healthcare, following calls from doctors, researchers, public health advocates, BC residents, and the BC Human Rights Commissioner. The World Health Organization continues to recommend universal masking policies in healthcare, and research demonstrates that masks are some of the most effective measures to reduce spread of airborne illnesses. Institutions have a duty of care to protect patients and their families, and provide safe working environments for staff.
Additionally, we call on BC decision makers to implement or restore other vital public health measures, including:
- Regulate indoor air quality to achieve clean air in healthcare, schools, workplaces, and other public settings, following ASHRAE Standard 241.
- Educate the public about how Covid is airborne, and the risks of Long Covid and repeated infections.
- Improve Paxlovid access in line with other provinces like Ontario.
- Conduct a timely vaccine rollout to avoid another “tripledemic” this fall.
- Resume Covid data and PCR testing availability and distribute rapid tests in high-risk settings like schools. The federal government has a stockpile of 39 million rapid tests – if we need to “manage our personal risks”, we need the information to accurately assess those risks.
In making these demands, we echo calls from over 50 other organizations and expert signatories who voice concerns about the risks of uncontrolled Covid-19 spread as BC heads into fall. Read the open letter and full list of signatories here.
Key Facts
Dangers of COVID-19
- Covid-19 is an airborne illness that spreads through the air near and far, and can linger for hours like cigarette smoke.
- People can have Covid-19 and infect others even when they aren’t displaying symptoms, and even after being vaccinated.
- All Covid patients (including vaccinated adults and children) are potentially at risk of long-term health damage or death, though some groups are disproportionately affected. These risks multiply with each reinfection.
- Long Covid affects at least 10-20% of those who contract Covid-19, including roughly 1 in 6 children.
- BC regularly experiences among the highest Covid-19 rates in Canada (currently ~1 in every 52 people infected) as well as nearly the highest excess mortality in the country.
- Covid risks are rising both in Canada and internationally (including in the US, in the UK and in Japan), with risks from the new EG.5.1 variant (codename ‘Eris’). This variant has now arrived in BC.
Dangers in healthcare
- As of April 6, 2023, mask directives have been removed in most BC healthcare settings, including children’s hospitals, cancer centres, ERs and long-term care. Visitor Covid screening and testing has also been discarded.
- Since discarding mask protections, multiple BC hospitals and long-term care centres have suffered Covid outbreaks and case clusters.
- According to research on the Omicron wave in Korea, people infected with Covid-19 in hospital are 70 times more likely to die than those who contract it in the community.
- Workers in long-term care homes and acute health care settings have the highest number of Covid-related WorkSafe claims of any industry in BC.
All this happens against a backdrop of where right now in BC:
- There is no mandatory self-isolation while sick, and people can return to work, school and social interactions while still Covid positive and infectious.
- Hospitals and long-term care facilities may keep Covid-positive patients in the same room as other people, and declaring an outbreak is discretionary.
- Some BC health jurisdictions (e.g. Vancouver Island Health) specifically discourage healthcare workers from testing themselves for Covid-19.
- Access to Covid-19 treatments such as Paxlovid has been the most restricted of any province in Canada, with recent guideline changes still leaving many high-risk people ineligible, and falling far short of other provinces.
- Many British Columbians, including over 80% of children under 12, are not up-to-date with Covid vaccination.
- BC has a record of downplaying Covid hazards in schools, despite studies showing that schools are a major source of transmission; that 70% of Covid infections transmit to households from children; and that there has been an astronomical rise in Covid infections of children and youth in BC.
- BC has closed its four Long Covid clinics, to the consternation of doctors and patients.
- BC’s healthcare system is in crisis, leading to situations with no doctors available for hospitalized patients or to keep ERs open.
Others Weigh In on Healthcare Masking
- World Health Organization: “If COVID-19 is circulating, visitors, along with health workers and caregivers, should wear a well-fitting medical mask at all times when caring for non-COVID-19 patients and in all common areas, even if physical distancing can be maintained.” Read the recommendation.
- Kasari Govender (BC Human Rights Commissioner): “[The] removal of masking directives in healthcare settings does not uphold a human rights centered approach to public health.” Read the full statement.
- Protect our Province BC: “Not only does removing masking in healthcare settings make hospital-acquired (nosocomial) illness far more likely, it [results] in the illness of far more healthcare workers which will further strain a medical system already near the breaking point.” Read the full statement.
- Dr. Karina Zeidler (Vancouver family physician): ““It’s morally reprehensible for our government to remove universal masking in health care. Hospitals shouldn’t be a place where you get Covid. More people died of Covid in 2022, the year of Omicron, than any other year of the pandemic. More than 1.4 million Canadians, including healthcare workers, are suffering from the devastating effects of Long Covid. Masking is an easy, cheap, effective measure against so many infectious diseases.” Read the full statement.
- Dr. Sanjiv Gandhi (clinical professor of surgery at UBC), Dr. Cameron Morhaliek (psychiatrist), and Dr. Joe Vipond (emergency doctor and clinical assistant professor at the University of Calgary): “Masks unequivocally mitigate the spread of airborne pathogens. When the havoc being wreaked by COVID is still rampant, it is dumbfounding why universal mandatory masking would be removed in health-care settings — especially acute-care hospitals filled with the vulnerable sick, the immunocompromised, and those with significant pre-existing illness.” Read the full statement.
- Dr. Tara Moriarty (Associate Professor University of Toronto, Infectious Disease Research Laboratory, co-founder of COVID-19 Resources Canada): “Promoting the safety of people at higher risk from COVID in essential healthcare settings is not only desirable. It is required if institutions truly support equitable, accessible care that promotes health.” Read the full statement.
- David Osborn, BSc, CMIOSH, SpDipEM, Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner: “The World Health Organization continues to recommend universal masking policies in health and social care… [abandoning] universal masking… is viewed by some patients as playing ‘Russian roulette’ with their health.” Read the full statement.
- Scottish Healthcare Workers Coalition: “[Removing universal masking in healthcare] is not based on the science of SARS-Cov-2 transmission and represents a flawed and dangerous decision which will result in more infections in health and social care settings.” Read the full statement.
- Over 28,000 petitioners and rising: “Canadian hospitals need to maintain MASK mandates.” Find the petition here.
- 2,034 poll respondents (via a social media poll by a Vancouver Covid safety advocate): 85% of respondents state they are “avoiding or putting off non-emergency medical visits due to the removal of mask mandates in healthcare settings”. Find the poll here.
- 450 clinically vulnerable people (via a poll by Clinically Vulnerable Families): 91% of respondents state they “have or would delay / cancel medical appointments due to high Covid risks”; many of the remaining 9% state they had no choice but to attend. Find the poll here.
About DoNoHarm BC
We are a non-partisan action group of British Columbians advocating for evidence-based safety measures in high-risk settings.
Media kit
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