Posted on: April 6, 2023
On behalf of Dr. Reka Gustafson, Vice President, Population Health and Chief Medical Health Officer, Marko Peljhan, Vice President, Clinical Services Central/South Island and Provincial Programs and James Hanson, Vice President, Clinical Services, Acute Care North and Community Services
As announced today, and as is usual for this time of year, the annual respiratory season has been declared over by the Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry.
Additionally, we are now entering the fourth year following the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, and much has changed. Today our population has a high level of protection from severe illness from COVID-19 due to very high vaccination coverage and previous infections in most people. Currently circulating variants are also less likely to lead to severe disease.
As a result of this high level of protection in our population, Island Health is returning most remaining COVID-19 specific infection prevention and control (IPC) requirements to routine practices for viral respiratory pathogens.
Effective today, Island Health is moving forward with the following changes:
- Returning to routine masking guidance through point-of-care risk assessments;
- Ending the universal masking requirements at our sites and in our services;
- Returning to visitor self-screening for acute communicable illnesses; and
- Ending active screening requirements for visitors, the requirements to check that visitors have received a primary COVID-19 vaccination series, or perform rapid antigen testing.
The Provincial Health Officer’s order requiring health care workers to receive a primary series of COVID-19 vaccination remains in place.
The changes we are able to make today is cause for recognizing the remarkable job you have done over the past three years -- your courage and hard work to keep our patients, residents, visitors and each other safe and helping us move forward to a place where the people we serve and our teams are able to interact with fewer barriers between them.
We expect that this will be welcome news to some while others may be hesitant about adopting these changes. Some staff are eager to return to pre-pandemic practices, while others have started their careers since 2020 and have only known our pandemic practices as the way we do things. We encourage people to go at their own pace, and respect the choices others make along this journey. As we celebrate our successes, we will be looking to what we have learnt over these past three years and will maintain as safe practices moving forward.
Following today’s provincial announcement, Island Health leadership will immediately review the impact these changes will have on Ambassadors/Greeters, our colleagues, who have greeted and screened visitors at our sites for the past three years. In the coming days we will engage with leaders, staff and union partners to determine how these roles will transition through the evolution of the pandemic.
Staff currently in Ambassador/Greeter roles are valued members of the Island Health team and contribute to positive patient and visitor experiences across the health authority. In the event of changes impacting these roles we will work with leaders, staff and union partners to be open and transparent in our communications.
For more information on these changes, please speak to your supervisor or HR representative.
Thank you for your efforts as we continue to ensure a safe and healthy workplace across all our sites and services.