Essential Visitors to receive clarity from Ministry of Health

New in this update:Friday COVID-19 updateVancouver Island is ending the week with COVID-19 case counts in the double digits. Today, there are 27 new cases confirmed, for a total of 134 new cases in the past seven days. The chief medical officer for Island Health, Dr. Richard Stanwick, says he expected to see a spike in cases this week, the result of Christmas and New Year's gatherings. Province, wide there are 617 new cases and 18 deaths in the past 24 hours.Clarifications made to essential visitors policyThe Minister of Health has announced changes to the province's essential visitor policy at long term care and assisted living facilities. Essential visitors are people who help residents with tasks ranging from hygiene or eating to mental wellness. They are supposed to be allowed to visit daily, but many have complained visits are denied arbitrarily. Some care homes have been accused of never telling families that an essential visitor designation was available to them. Adrian Dix says the amended policy is intended to more clearly outline what is expected of care homes when it comes to essential visitors."This will provide more consistency across care homes because there has been justifiable concern about that and not just from families and residents but also from workers and providers themselves, so this provides more consistency. And it also provides a clear pathway when a family or a person disagrees with a decision not to allow an essential visit."—Minister of Health Adrian Dix.Dix says there has been no change to social visitor policies, which usually take place once every two weeks for about an hour. He says that is unlikely to change for months until workers and residents in all homes in B.C. have been vaccinated against COVID-19.COVID-19 vaccine queue calculatorAre you curious about when you might receive the COVID-19 vaccine? There's a new online site that can give you a rough idea. It's called the Vaccine Queue Calculator for Canada It takes into account the federal guidelines for who gets the vaccine across the country, which is in line with the plan in B.C., however, every province has its own schedule so the results are only an estimate. The calculator's developers say as more data and more vaccines are approved, the calculator will become more predictable and accurate. B.C. ahead of national average for employmentEmployment figures for November show B.C. is doing better than the national average. While the national unemployment rate fell less than half a percentage point to 8 and a half per cent, the unemployment rate in B.C. fell almost a full point to 7.1 per cent. Despite new COVID-19 restrictions on events and gatherings, B.C. gained 24,000 jobs in November. Most of those gains were in construction. However, about 20,000 part-time jobs were lost, most of which were in sectors like tourism and hospitality. B.C.'s total employment has now bounced back to 98.7% of pre-pandemic levels.