BC to lift mask mandate on March 11; vaccine card program will end on April 8

Masks will no longer be required in public spaces in BC starting this Friday and the BC Vaccine Card program will end on April 8, the province has announced.

Provincial health officer Dr Bonnie Henry and health minister Adrian Dix made the announcement Thursday afternoon.

The repeal of the mask mandate comes into effect at 12:01am on March 11, and orders restricting capacity limits on faith gatherings, and affecting overnight kids’ camps will be lifted at the same time.

On March 18, restrictions on visitation in long-term care facilities will be restored to the orders that were in place before the Omicron wave took hold in BC. Testing and proof of vaccination will still be required for visitors.

Masks will still be required in healthcare settings like physician’s offices and hospitals, but they will no longer be mandatory in ‘lower-risk’ public settings.

Guidelines on childcare and K-12 schools will also be revised. Henry said they will be updated to reflect the different risk levels, and said masks will not be required in schools once students return from spring break.

When the vaccine card program ends on April 8, businesses will no longer be required to have a COVID-19 safety plan and will instead be required to transition to a communicable diseases plan. The requirement for anyone living in a post-secondary residence to be vaccinated will also be removed on that date.

The Burnaby Board of Trade welcomed the move, but cautioned that local businesses will need time to adjust to the change in public health measures.

“People and businesses will move at different speeds, and some people may wish to continue using some of these measures into the future. We are asking everyone who is visiting a local business to be patient and understanding of how they may choose to unwind these restrictions,” CEO Paul Holden said in a statement.

BC Greens leader Sonia Furstenau, meanwhile, criticized the NDP government for not releasing the exact benchmarks on cases, hospitalizations, and deaths that it used to make its decisions.

“I am deeply concerned that without a plan for the future and clear information on why we’re making decisions, removing these measures will create more confusion, allow for greater transmission of COVID, and risk distrust in government,” Furstenau said.

While she didn’t reference any numbers that had informed her office’s decision-making, Henry said there’s been a dramatic reduction in cases and hospitalizations since the peak of the Omicron wave in recent weeks.

“This is encouraging because as transmission goes down, so the risks to all of us go down in the community,” she said.

Henry said she now feels confident relaxing some public health measures—saying the province’s aim is to implement the most minimal interventions required to keep people safe, and particularly those who are more susceptible to severe illness from COVID.

The province is also citing BC’s high level of vaccination and immunity in informing its decisions on public health orders—pointing to data that shows that more than 90% of British Columbians have either been vaccinated against COVID or have immunity from a previous infection.

That includes about 30% of children under 5 years old, who are the only age group to not yet be eligible for vaccination. Meanwhile, 55.7% of kids 5-11 have received their first vaccination, and 90.8% of people above 12 in the province have had two doses.

“We’re going in the right direction,” Henry said Thursday afternoon.

However, Henry said it’s become clear that COVID will be with us for “some time” and that future surges may be possible.

In planning for future waves and especially leading up to the respiratory season this fall, BC will conduct population and facility-based surveillance to detect community transmission of COVID, genetic sequencing to track variants, targeted serological surveillance (to detect antibodies from previous infections), and wastewater surveillance.

While Omicron accounts for the majority of new infections in BC, an update on variants of concern in the province shows that BA.2—a sublineage of Omicron sometimes referred to as “Stealth Omicron”–has been increasing in prevalence over the last few weeks.