Live from Midtown Manhattan, the Cube's live coverage of Big Data NYC, a silicon-angled Wikibon production made possible by Hortonworks, we do Hadoop and WAN Disco, Hadoop made Invincible. And now your co-hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Hello everyone, we're live here in New York City for Big Data NYC. This is the event where we're covering what's going on in the big data world in New York City, also covering Hadoop World and Stratoconference going on. And we have a special presentation this week. We've done a lot of things, we've launched companies on the Cube this week, we've done product announcements, we've talked to thought leaders, but now we're doing the book signing. So we're pleased to, John and Dave are here with one of our favorite guests, the Dean of Big Data, Bill Schmarzo with EMC, who wrote his first book, Big Data. Understanding how data powers big business. Bill welcome back, Cube alumni, Dean of Big Data, I think we called you that Stratoconference three years ago. Yes, yes. You're the ones that coined that term. Tell us the story, why the book? So the book really, the inspiration for the book really started three years ago, John, when I did that Stratoconference, I did a session at that conference that was called the Big Data NBA. And the aspiration or the goal of that session was to really help the technology people understand how the business should be thinking about employing data. So it took a very business-centric approach towards understanding the value drivers and key business initiatives and how big data could impact that. So I did that session. I think John and you and Dave were the guys who coined the term the Dean of Big Data, right? So from that point forward, whenever I started to write blogs, I had a framework in mind of what I wanted to tell people. In fact, I was still working on a class around the Big Data NBA. I'm going to talk to the University of San Francisco about actually piloting the class. But it all kind of came together. The, you know, the Wiley folks reached out to me courtesy of EMC. We had a lot of material from talking to customers and from writing my blog and such. And it just all came together.  So I would love to get you while we're live, sign the books, you know, get well soon, John, you know, give me a little John Hancock on there. We're excited to go ahead and sign it up there. Dave, Dave, we're inspiring books now. I mean, theCUBE is the open source content model. We love it. Thanks for doing this, Dave. We've been having so much fun for four years now. We've been at Hadoop World. Well, it's just awesome seeing you got to get me too, Bill. It's fantastic, John, just seeing the way the whole space has developed. Bill, I remember it wasn't that long ago. Maybe two years ago. I'm not even sure it was that long. But two years ago, it was like an EMC-CIO conference and you did a breakout on big data. And it was really interesting. It was a CIO audience. There was a lot of trepidation, you know. A lot of, very much so, a lack of knowledge about big data. You were sort of doing the big data one-on-one at the time. And now the compression of knowledge has been so rapid. It's quite amazing. Yeah, to me, what's interesting is that the technology sands underneath the big data discussion are still morphing quite feverishly. There's new enhancements to existing technologies. Hadoop versions and all the Mahoot and MapReduce and there's all kinds of new products coming out. While those sands are going through that metamorphosis, the business sides are starting to realize that there is real value in the data and then the technology that tees the insights of that data. Especially if you target organization's key business initiatives. If you understand what it is the organization is trying to achieve, whether it's acquiring customers or retaining customers or driving on-time delivery pickups or improving hospital readmissions, if you think about it from a business perspective, it really puts a frame around what data do I need to improve that business process or that business initiative, and then what technologies do I need to tease all those insights. And when you take a business-like approach to this, it really takes this almost mind-numbing amount of technology and greatly simplifies it. You know, one of the inspirations when we started Wikibon was Don Tapscott's book on Wikonomics and the whole premise of the book was, you put it out there and people will find things and you didn't realize and good things will happen and it sort of worked out that way. And I've noticed in your book there's a great line here in Chapter 5, one interesting aspect of big data is how it is challenging the conventional thinking regarding how the non-analytical business user should be using analytics. To me, that's the huge opportunity here that we're not even beginning to scratch the surface. If you could talk about what your experience is in terms of putting analytic tools in front of the non-analytic, non-typical BI users, which has always been the promise of BI, which never happened. Is it going to happen here? Well, Dave, you hit on something that's probably my single most biggest passion about big data, which is if we create all these great analytics, but we don't surface them, present them in a way that's actionable to the end users, why bother? Why bother doing it? The ability to take and to conduct and do all that high value analytics munging through all the data and then how you surface it up to users changes dramatically. So the average user is not an analyst. If you're talking to a brand manager or we're dealing with a grocery chain talking about how we empower the store managers. Well, they're not analysts. They don't want charts and tables and Excel things and BI tools. They want to know what's working and what's not working. They want to know, should I buy more tide or not? Hey, there's a football game next week at Stanford versus Cal. You better have more beer on hand. And by the way, Stanford and Cal fans don't drink Budweiser. So you better make sure you have a higher level of beer in there. So they want to be able to have the technology minus data, tell them what's going on in the data, and then make recommendations that they can act on. So you are in the services organization at EMC. So how are you spending your time these days? Are you consulting? Are you helping build solutions? So I have by far the best job inside the EMC, which is I get to spend all of my time with customers. And what I'm doing with the customers is really working them trying to figure out where and how do we start. What business problems are we going after? What data do we have available to us both internally and externally that helps us to drive that process better? And what technologies do I need to empower that? So I'm able to talk to customers and I met with the CEO and his staff of a large theater chain, right? Trying to figure out how they get more people more butts and seats during off times, right? We had scheduled a half hour meeting with the staff. Half hour in, he tells everybody, call your next hour and a half worth of meetings and cancel. We're going to spend two hours here. And we were up on a whiteboard talking about how do we leverage this data? How do we leverage a mobile app? How do we do this? And it's a great job because I get a chance to see firsthand people trying to tackle really difficult business problems, leveraging all the capabilities that big data has now brought to us in the last couple of years. It's interesting, you mentioned in your book about it's for big business and people using business you mentioned kind of the MBA kind of approach. I mean this is the kind of discussion value change. You mentioned, you know, a lot of MBA concepts in the book. It sounds like customers are pretty intoxicated by the possibilities. So the question I have for you is are they seeing the use cases? Is it more of just kind of, you know, exciting them a little bit more? Are they seeing the use cases? Because that has come up as the key issue right now. Validation for big data is there. Now it's okay, what use cases? Is it picking shoes at this point? Are they trying to identify it? So I think what we're seeing is that the organizations are seeing the use cases. They're reading about them in the press. They're seeing them at conferences. But they want to know what it means to them. How do I make this relevant for my organization? And so while, you know, the story is about Facebook and some large banks or some large insurance company may be interesting, for them it's not concrete. Google can do it. Well they like to say, we're not Google, right? We're not Facebook. They want to make sure it's relevant for them. I like to coin this term. I think it's in the book. I call it the 4M's of big data. Make me more money. That's what they want to do. There's a point in the discussion and that's where it starts to become interesting, where you take a part of the business, a particular business initiative they're trying to accomplish and you try to, you build that out, you mock it up, you build a lab around it, you show them ramifications, you show them the business case, you show them the ROI, you show them the lift. That's when they start getting excited, because now you're talking about them. And so I think with their issue, they've got with many vendors, many vendors talk about the vendors. And so I think when you get into a dialogue with a customer, you're talking about them, what's interesting to them, what's most important to them, and you can show how big data can make that come to life. That's when things get really exciting. They get all jazz and you start to see some of the organizational boundaries start to meld the side. I want to ask you about the organizational issues. We were at the Q party last night, saw you there. One of the surprise guests that walked in was MIT Data Quality Conference. It was a symposium for Chief Data Officers. And the premise of that event, Bill, was really that the Chief Data Officer, if you want to be a data-driven organization, you've got to have a Chief Data Officer. And that individual needs to be separate from IT. Now it was a controversial concept. Now many industries, particularly financial services, government, maybe healthcare that are highly regulated, you're seeing that take place largely from a governance push. But not so much from a make-me-more-money push. So I'm wondering your thoughts on that whole Chief Data Officer role. Should there be a data czar? Should it be included? Is the CIO the data czar? Should it be separate or integrated? So is this a setup for the book? Totally. Actually, I have a chapter here. I talk about the Chief Data Officer. I figured you must have, but I really want you to weigh in on this. I think the Chief Data Officer, I think you're spot on. It's separate from IT. In fact, my recommendation is it's an economics major. Who understands what the data is worth? If I'm going to go out and try to acquire data, how do I put value around what that data is worth to me? And then also an economics person can look at it from a risk and compliance perspective. What are the costs associated with not being in compliance? So I totally agree that organizations need to have this Chief Data Officer who's got this economics background and sort of this hunger for how do I bring more data in? Likewise, I eventually think you're going to see what I'm going to call a Chief Analytics Officer, which is somebody who is going through the organization uncovering all this analytics IP that organizations have and even, you know, corralling it, inventorying it, versioning it, and maybe even putting legal bounds around it. So, you know, somebody with a law degree might be a better, a really good Chief Analytics Officer who's trying to take that IP that you developed and actually put legal protection around it. So the swim lanes of this new organization are kind of funky because you've got data science, you've got your Chief Analytics Officer, you've got legal, you've got governance, you've got information management. Do those all sort of report under the CDO? Is there a mix? Is there a matrix? I mean, I know it depends, but it's a complicated situation. And you've also missed what I think is what we mentioned earlier, one of the most key roles is my user experience. I'm not sure I have a user experience officer. Maybe you do. Organizations should. Most organizations, you know, the good ones are really few and far between because they don't really think about it from a user experience perspective. Think about it from a corporate messaging perspective. So, yeah, I'll add to that mix by saying the privacy security. So you need to have a user experience.  Just make me more money, I guess. No, I do think, but your hitting spot on is that you're going to have all these new roles. I don't know if they report the CFO, they report the COO, they report to I'm not sure where they go and we'll learn as we think. But I do think those roles, no matter where they report, those roles are critical. A person who's day in and day out focused and they wake up in the morning and go to bed at night and they're thinking about data. How do I get more of it? How do I protect it? How do I get value to it? Somebody on the analytics side trying to figure out how do I leverage all this analytics IP I have? How do I patent it? How do I maybe even resell it and monetize it? And this user experience person who has a passion for the user can say are we we capture all this data about our customers but are we acting out in a way that's smart, that is in compliance with the privacy sort of thing. So these new roles I think are going to pop up, I just don't know where to start. And it is somewhat of an organizational do-over to use a phrase of my friend Paul Gillan if you just pave the cow path and roll data in not going to be as effective as you really think about and how to best leverage these new roles. Oh, I think your spot, in fact, I think that's a key point is because today we treat data as a cost element. I mean data warehousing technologies are so darn expensive that we've gone through a process of trying to minimize much data we have. So if you pave the cow path, we'll never bring data in, right? So what we want to do is we want to get to that point where we've got that organizational reset where you're bringing in data as an asset and you have somebody who's really focused in on making that successful. So a long ago where, you know, data was something that had to be managed, reduced data, compressed data, back up it's just insurance that Chuck Hollis wrote about this. He said the bit has flipped, you know, from that to make more money. So let's talk about the crowd chat. I love this crowd chat. Dave knows all I do is talk about crowd chat these days. But we're getting some great interaction on crowdchat.net slash Stratocommerce. But it comes up that the concept of data artistry is interesting, right? You mentioned chief user experience officer. Are you seeing customers thinking about the art of big data in the sense of this certainly is science. We're going to get data science.  It's about 200,000 data scientists in the world. And that number is certainly going to grow. But there's over 2 million analysts that aren't like the Python writing data science geeks. But those are future data science and training. So over 2 million people that will be kind of quote the new data science. But for normal people, right, users, you mentioned, is there a chief user experience officer opportunity around the art of big data? What have you heard from customers? Are they that level of of walking erect, if you will, in the spirit of, you know, evolution of big data? Are they still kind of, you know, still in the early days of just learning to walk a little bit? How far, where are we on that whole spectrum? That data artist concept is pretty cool. It's a cool idea. And I'm not sure it's a role as much as a characteristic. I mean, I would want my user person or team to have sort of an artist aspect. And when I think about artists, I think about somebody who is trying to you know, carve out an experience that's very rewarding, interesting, natural and actionable. I also can see, you know, there's artistry in the data science that the chief data officer in trying to be creative and paint a picture with different data sources. You know, do I bring in local event data by screen scraping event bright? Do I bring in, you know, Zillow housing price data in order to get a better feel for the wealth effect that my customers might be having? So you kind of have that artist aspect of and it's kind of like experimentation, in my opinion, but it's got a finer edge to it. It's not just experimenting for experimentation purposes. Experimenting because you want to change how things look and feel. What are your thoughts on this big data? You know, this is coming back around because it's becoming quite obvious that, I mean, we had Avi Metta on yesterday and he was talking about some of the things that his firm's working on. One of the big areas they attacked was risk. We probed down a little bit, talking about risk of credit risk. Okay, well I can very you know, pretty accurately start to infer race, religion, sex, you know, based on a number of things, what people are listening to and what they're buying, etc. And there really are no privacy guidelines around that. So it's like the Wild Wild West, people are going to start collecting all this data. It's almost like the music's going to stop and whoever has the most data ends up the next axiom. So what's your take on what's going to happen there? What is the state of privacy? How much are clients actually thinking about that, either exploiting it or being careful about it?  Well I think privacy is on the forefront of many organizations, especially large organizations. The Fair Credit Reporting Act, as you alluded to there, was very tricky about, you know, you can't make credit decisions and credit extension decisions based on, you know, race and sexual gender and things like that. But you're exactly right. I can interpret a lot of that. I can score that. I can score that. I can be fair and accurate about that. So I think organizations are actually really concerned about that and I actually think that we could very well see yet another role around decision governance. That is, just because you know something do you act on it. And my favorite example in decision governance is the target story, right? Where Target had scored this one person was a female and was pregnant and they were showing her ads for diapers and baby cribs and the father saw this and freaked out and went to his local target store and read them the riot act and then found out two weeks later she was pregnant, right? So and a lot of data scientists are pretty proud of that story because they knew before the father I think that's a horrible story because I think there's a point here where just because you know something doesn't mean you should act on it and I've got to believe that if Target could figure out that was a girl who was pregnant, they probably had a pretty good idea what her age was and they probably knew that she was underage, right? They had a score that probably said her age is in this range here. So I think you're going to see this this emergence of the decision governance type role. It's going to look at privacy issues. It's going to look at the data they're uncovering and they're going to try to figure out and they're going to make a decision at a corporate level whether I want to act on that data or not. Again, just because I know something doesn't mean I should act on it. And many times I don't want that decision of action left to my campaign manager or my webmaster who may not have the same kinds of privacy concerns that my chief officers are going to have. What you're calling this? You think it's going to be self-policing or you think the big hand of government is going to have to come down and adjudicate? I think the way the government is playing right now, I think government wants to get involved in everything. So I think the government will the problem with the government is there always a decade behind. I think they're still trying to figure out how to regulate faxes right now. So I just don't know if the government will be able to it can't move as fast as technology. So I think that it's what's going to happen is a critical mass of organizations are going to have to come together and put together some rules that are both protect the user and still allow the business to do what they want.  So I want to follow up on that because you know we all know government's not one government there's like a zillion governments and so the government's a decade behind in so many aspects but one that they seem not to be a decade behind on is big data. You look at the NSA and see what's happening there. And open data initiatives underway. That's wonderful right. The data.gov stuff. I agree. And a lot of that intellectual property is starting to seep out into the commercial world right. It's like to see the guy some squirrels spin off from the NSA. So you know it's another example perhaps of the government funding you know innovation right.  I actually think you know I'm actually really excited about the open data initiative you know and what the government is doing as far as making all this data available I can be honest with you our data scientists use that data all the time. We're constantly bringing that data into our projects. We're trying to figure out if we can tease insights out of it and it's wonderful that they've gone sort of open sourced all this different data and so you know I kudos to the government for doing that. As you said there's parts of the government that part of the government is getting it right. The people who regulate tend to struggle. So we have another comment on Twitter here I want to run by you because this is good comment from a thought leader out there he says at Furrier I find it I find that getting started by asking one question then will answer many more to follow. Math is just a part of it. I would claim logic more. So the conversations developing is you know math is great but it's the insight it's the art of the big data so that's kind of the use case kind of conversation. So his point is it's iterative. If you're going through it you find that you agree with that statement and what's your experience with customers is it like let's tackle one thing that opens up a window into more or is it more throw a bunch of stuff on the table. I think that's a great point. I do think it's very iterative. The one thing that we have found is that every company I've dealt with knows what questions are trying to ask and answer. What they don't understand is how does all these new data sources and technology enable me to ask and answer that question either at different level of granularity or different level of frequency. What happens when people start getting their questions answered and we kind of learn this in the BI space they ask more and more. So one of the things in the big data space is we see this iteration process happening more quickly. Is that people are starting to see the answers and they're asking the next level of questions and the next level of questions and it is very iterative and it is a fairly logical flow that they will ask the first level of questions and they'll keep drilling down. They want to know why, what happened here and etc. So I agree with that point. I think it is a very iterative process and it's part of that. We also tell organizations don't worry about finding the business problem to go after. Find a. Don't pick the pick a business problem because just get started and innovation and creativity is contagious. We run these vision workshop processes and I'm always amazed once we start this process going how somebody who has been sitting back has been quiet and really doesn't seem to be too engaged. They're the one coming up with the best idea. And the group just sort of plays off each other. Like the bottom of the line up in a baseball game. That's the same. We're at the GE event and one of the things is anyone can be Billy Bean to use the money ball example which in our industry is a little bit overplay but to the average person, oh that makes sense. Money ball is a common thread and I want to ask you that because that's a key value that anyone in the organization can be an analyst without being an analyst. It's a unique perspective and can contribute. So that's a key point. I also want to go back to what you said earlier which is getting a lot of traction on Twitter. The 4M's of big data make me more money. Which is clever. It's a great sound bike. Always good to have that on the view. Four P's of marketing, put your MBA hat on. 3V's of big data, not the 4M's of big data. We've got all kinds of slogans here in the queue but that's a good one. Make me more money. But what that really means is all businesses are in business to make profit. But it's not about just the money but the user experience. It's about the customers looking at the things that they do that make money. Is that what you mean by that? Is that why it's getting a lot of traction? Yeah, and it's a good point is that organizations are with all this customer data and insights and the 4M's as kind of the corporate charter, they have to carefully balance about the making money portion versus the user benefit portion. A grocery chain would love to have all their customers buy all the private labels. Margin's better. They're going to make a lot more money if you came on and buy generic billy beer and things like that. But the customer experience if I'm pushing things to customers that don't benefit the customer eventually the customer is going to revolt and go away. So it's not just on margin and you're saying don't push billy beer if that's not what the customer is. Serving the customer is what drives the business model. Exactly, you've got to look longer term. Not only how do I build try to get more revenue and profit from that customer which is in balance with the experience but I ultimately want to build advocacy. I want customers out there who have a high likelihood to recommend, who are referring other people to me. I want to build a community around what I've got to offer. And if I'm short changing somebody even for a moment taking advantage of what I know about them they're going to revolt and they're going to vote with their feet and they're going to vote with their pocket books. So that's a very tricky balance. Okay, so I want to just plug the book again, congratulations. So we're doing book signings here. Innovation in the queue, we have books from thanks to Wiley and Sons, we appreciate that.  Obviously, we were at the GE event Industrial Cloud, Dave and I were talking with the CEO of GE and his staff and top customers like United Airlines Oil and Gas customers, Apache Com, Med Utility and then, you know, Health Care. These areas have big business issues and they're big businesses. They have machinery, they have it's not just math and databases. It's actually, you know, hard assets. That's where the big data world's going. Do you talk about that in the book at all? Is it still more tech industry related? And how do you relate to industries that are newly impacted? So in the book there are numerous case studies, examples of how different kinds of companies are using data or could be using data and technology. I look at it from an industry perspective in many cases. I talk about health care. I talk about retail. I talk about insurance. I talk about banking. I also look at it from a business function. I talk about sales and marketing and procurement. So the book is chock full of different examples. And the reason why it's full of examples is because I got customers telling them to me. So the book is really if I were to get credit to any one organization, it's my customers. Who I meet with all the time, who have all these great ideas, who have these challenges, who are freely sharing stuff and all I did is just capture. I listened really well. I'm not exactly a sharp guy but I listened really well. You're getting data. You are extracting the signal from the noise out there. The people who spend the money who actually are in business to serve customers and have an inherent reason to do big data. That's the shiny new toy. I have the best job inside the EMC. I get to spend all my time talking about it. Tell us a story about how the book was written. You log a lot of miles. We're Facebook friends so I see the status updates. Stuck in Iowa. On the tarmac. It's fun to hear and keep track of how we talk sports a lot in Palo Alto. You chipped away at this. Tell the story of, you know, obviously inspired by the Cube and other MBA programs. How did you just get it done? Take us through the process of writing. While he contacted me and they had taken a look at my blog and said you have a lot of interesting material in your blog. We think you have the ability to turn that into a book. My first reaction was, a book? That's going to be a lot of work. I was sitting down with my family for supper one night. I had been contacted about writing a book. I don't know about it. My daughter said how much money are you going to make? You don't make much money on a book. My son said why don't you donate some of the proceeds to something interesting?  Part of the proceeds of the book are going to be donated to breast cancer. That was the moment I realized I need to write this book. There was something there that I had a chance to give back. That became the motivating factor. I spend a lot of time on the road flying from San Francisco to Chicago like a four and a half hour flight or going to Kansas City or New York or Boston. Those are long flights. I have seen every movie on the airplane. What are we going to do? I write in hotel lobbies. Starbucks across the street.  You have elbows. You have carp tunnel. I was on the road so much. If you are spending 20 hours a week in hotels and airplanes and such, it ended up my goal was to bang on a chapter a week. It took about four months or so to get it done. We are here live in New York. This is the Cube, our big data NYC covering all the action in big data in New York City, Hadoop World and Strata Conference right across the street. This is an amazing segment with our friend and gas Cube alumni Bill Schmarzo who we coined the dean of big data because he was teaching people. That is what people were learning three years ago and now ultimately it is validation. The market is growing. The new book. Understanding how data powers big business. Read this book. It is really great. It is more business oriented. If you have an MBA, you are not a geek but you want to understand how to get your arms around it. Read this book. It is a great book. Bill, thanks so much. We will be right back.


See that? Yeah, look, look, look, look. I'm still in the video then, too. Stupid. Are you okay? Oh. Did you fart? Yeah. Yeah, that was hard. It hurt.  Ah. Come on, baby. Ah. I think our door's closed. I think it's huge. Uh-huh. That's bigger than the top of a pot can. You have to kill it. I know. He's bigger than that door handle. There's the door handle. We're going back up. And there he is. Where's the fly squatter at? In the kitchen. Where in the kitchen? Underneath the sink.


good afternoon everyone before I begin I'd like to acknowledge that we're gathered on the land of the Lekwungen speaking people of the Songhees and the Esquimalt First Nations my name's Adrian Dix I'm BC's Minister of Health my right is Dr. Bonnie Henry BC's Provincial Health Officer we're here to provide an update on the health care professionals vaccination reporting in October 2021 Dr. Henry created a new order that requires all professional health colleges to provide personal information about their registrants to the Ministry of Health this order impacts 18 colleges we've made the commitment to share the aggregate vaccination rates by professions and this is why we're here today the goal of sharing this data is to make sure members of the public have the general vaccination information they need to help them make informed decisions as they seek treatment or services from a regulated health professional data that we're reporting on today are for 17 of the 18 colleges about 94% overall have been vaccinated or are medically exempt so on a note on the 17 or 18 side we're not reporting data from the College of Nurses and midwives today but you do have very significant information we know that the vast majority and I mean the vast majority of nurses work in the public health care system and the vast majority of those of those nurses have been vaccinated to the tune of 99% so when those numbers are introduced finally into these numbers we'll see them go up not down the nurses are extremely well vaccinated in BC for those of you keeping track keeping track of these things the highest level of vaccination is the College of Dietitians followed by the College of Physicians and Surgeons in BC at 98% it's expected as I say the data for all things including nurses will be available in in the coming weeks and just remind everyone that nurses represent about 46% of all those in health professional colleges so they're about the rest of them are about 67,000 the nurses are about 63,000 that's why it's taking just a little bit longer I want to say two things just finally and then I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Henry the first is that about just under 80,000 78,362 people in BC have received their fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccine that the priority in the month of April was long-term care and those who are clinically vulnerable who had received in effect their first or their third vaccinations soonest over this month of May we're going to see a very high number of those over 70 reach 182 days and then be eligible for their fourth dose dose vaccination we're going to have a week next week in fact when 75,000 people over 70 reach that level and they'll be all be invited to be vaccinated and as you know there are hundreds of locations across BC and the hundreds particularly in community pharmacy some from health authorities and community pharmacy and we encourage everyone I'm got your first dose get your first dose and happily I'm happy to say about a thousand people have received their first dose of Novavax since it's become available and more are coming every day and got your second dose get your second dose if you haven't got your third dose get your third dose that's more than a million people invited who haven't got the third dose yet and of course for those over 70 those who are clinically vulnerable for those who are a long-term care or supporting people in long-term care that's that's vital as well so with that it's my honor to introduce Dr. Bonnie Henry to share a few words thank you very much it's been a while thank you as you know we've been on a long journey around this around the vaccination and we have safe and effective vaccines that have really changed the game for us as you know in October we issued an order around hospital and community health care and other services COVID-19 vaccination status and that meant that people can be reassured that in our public health care system across the board from hospitals to community to long-term care settings and public health settings everybody who they receive services from is vaccinated and protected and these orders have helped protect our health care system by ensuring that we have that high level of coverage in these essential health care settings and I just want to express my gratitude to my colleagues across the board for stepping up we also recognize the important role of health care providers not covered under that order and that's why we put in a place this information primarily firstly an information status and prevention measures order that applies to regulated health professionals so BC as in many other as every other province in Canada has a regulated health professionals act that creates what we call a college and I'm expressing this because I've had some people explain to me that they're confused about what this is about so the colleges so the College of Physicians and Surgeons for example is the body that's responsible for licensing and establishing standards of practice for physicians and surgeons in the province and the same happens for the other 18 colleges that we have in British Columbia and they have an important role of as I said establishing these standards of practice ensuring that people who are licensed to practice as a regulated health professional meet the standards for licensing and their primary role is protection of the public and this is what a profession is is having a self-regulating body with the focus on protecting the public so I've been working at my office have been working with each of the colleges to first understand the vaccination status of all of the registrants so all of us who are registered and licensed to practice and then to develop the standards so that we can ensure people can make their own informed decisions about whether to receive in-person services from a regulated health professional so not surprising to me much like other British Columbia residents there is a very high degree of COVID-19 vaccination coverage amongst all regulated health professionals in British Columbia among practicing regulated health professionals 93.9% of completed the two dose at least two dose vaccine series or have a medical exemption from my office as of April 25th so as the minister indicated we have not yet got the final numbers from the College of Nurses and midwives and this is because there are so many registrants and that is a process and I've mentioned this before that it was a lot more challenging than we initially thought in terms of being able to link people and then determine and have the colleges reach out to each of the registrants for whom they did not yet have information on vaccination status so the aggregated data that we're putting out today likely underestimates a little bit vaccination coverage mostly because as we mentioned the College of Nurses and midwives have had some challenges in getting the status and there also is we have a column where people are either known to be non-vaccinated or for whom we don't yet have information and as you are probably aware there's new registrants new people coming in to practice in different parts of our health system in the every year and every month and so it takes some time for those to be updated. But we do know as was mentioned the College of Dietitians so people who work in our dietary world across the board and the College of Physicians and Surgeons are the highest rates at 98% and the College of Occupational Therapies is close behind at 97% and we've put out a list so people can see and this will help you understand that the levels of immunization are very high in most of the registered health professionals. Practicing registrants who are least likely to be reported as fully vaccinated are the College of Naturopathic Physicians, the College of Chiropractors and the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners and Acupuncturists and there's some variation between each of the regulated health professionals amongst those colleges but I will say that I am very proud that all of these are very high rates of immunization and I think we can be reassured that across the board regulated health professionals understand the value of vaccination in protecting both themselves, the people they work with and the people we care for. We will continue my office to work with each of the colleges to ensure that we have standards in place so that people will be able to make informed decisions as they seek treatment from individual practitioners across BC. So because we have this very high rate of protection from vaccination it has meant that we have weathered this Omicron storm over the last few months without overwhelming strain on our health care system that has been seen in some other jurisdictions but it has not been easy in any way and I cannot imagine where we would be if we had not stepped up across this province to thank everyone who did their bit by getting vaccinated. This has allowed us to remove restrictions and get back to more of those important essential social and other activities that we love and to come together again but we know that hospitalization and infection rates from the data that we put out they've leveled off somewhat but we are still in this pandemic and we know there are still strains on the health care system and as we come together more frequently with more people the virus has more opportunity to spread and we are seeing that I don't think there's anybody that I know certainly not in this room I don't believe who hasn't known somebody who has had most likely Omicron in the last few months. We also know that the protection from two doses of vaccines or from recent infection does wane over time and particularly for milder infections it is it is still a very strong protection that we are seeing against hospitalization and severe disease but now is more important than ever to get that booster dose and I encourage everyone who has not yet received that dose to get it now it is not too late if you've had a Omicron infection in January February you're now at a point where you need to get that extra boost as well. We continue to see circulation of BA.2 and particularly the strain that is even more infectious the BA.2.12 we see that in certain areas of the province more than others and we are also seeing some other variants like the BA.4 and .5 which are seen in other jurisdictions as well. What we know now in reality is that three doses of a primary series of vaccine is needed to protect against Omicron and yes it does increase our protection against infection even mild infection and it also boosts that protection of against severe disease and protects you from some of the long-term complications of COVID-19 that we are seeing even young people with milder illness can experience. I also would encourage everyone who is 70 or older First Nation Métis and Inuit Peoples in British Columbia 55 years of age and older and people with immune compromising conditions so our CEV groups to get their second booster or fourth shot. We know that also makes a difference right now. We need to be aware that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is still circulating around the world and I don't need to say that. This virus is pernicious and it's changeable so while the level of immunity that we have from recent infection and from the high rates of vaccination we have here and the fact that we're entering the spring and summer season where we know there's a bit of seasonality to this virus spread means we will likely have some reprieve in the next few months but we need to plan for what's coming and particularly I'm concerned and working with my team to look at what are the the possible scenarios that we may face given our situation our our demographics and our immunity levels here when we get into the next respiratory season in the fall we will need to manage influenza we're starting to see a bit of it now but influenza will come back in the fall now that we're traveling more now that we're connecting more and we'll have on top of that the usual things that we see like RSV and also COVID this virus is going to be with us for some time we do not yet know if all of us will need another dose of vaccine come the fall or protection from the three doses we'll carry most of us through and only some people will need another dose those are the the things that we are planning for for the future we're watching closely and we're planning for how that will happen now we have come through this latest challenge because people in BC have continued to take those measures to protect themselves their families and their communities our weekly surveillance reports gives you the sense of what I call our COVID climate you know where we are facing what are the trends that we're seeing right now over time and then every day we need to monitor the weather in our own context that means asking ourselves am I up to date on my vaccinations how am I feeling today if I'm not feeling well I can use the rapid tests that are available and I encourage people to pick those up they can help but it also is about taking that that that responsibility to say if I'm not feeling well what am I doing who am I going to be with and maybe I need to postpone a visit to an elderly relative until I'm feeling better or if there's people in my close family or social circle who I know have COVID then we need to take a step back from some of the riskier activities if I'm going to be in an indoor place with a lot of people for that I don't know for a longer period of time then bring a mask and wear a mask that will protect you and it helps protect others we are transitioning through this emergency phase of the pandemic but we still need to be vigilant and we still need to be aware of the things that will we make a difference both for us personally and for those around us we're not through it yet but we do we are making a difference and we need to continue to support each other as we have throughout this very long storm with compassion and with kindness thank you we're happy to take questions thanks very much to media on the phone line please press star one to get in the queue if you're not already there we are going to go to questions in the room first if you are comfortable in the room with lowering your mask while you ask a question it's easier for us to hear that way we're going to start with Richard Zisman vaccine questions on both ends of the spectrum in Quebec they have opened up fort doses for all adults now why is British Columbia not doing that in terms of the oldest British Colombians are you concerned about the uptake so far in fort doses and on the flip end is there any update from Ottawa on vaccine for zero to five year olds and and whether we may be getting any news at some point that they are eligible for vaccine yeah so there is a little bit of news I'll start with the second one and it's it's not zero we do know that the developing immune system probably doesn't respond to vaccination and and has some protection from from your mother or your up to about six months so the we do know Moderna has put in to Health Canada submitted data for six months to five years of age so that is the next one that we're likely to see Health Canada has just started looking at those data and it often takes several weeks to months it has not been approved for used anywhere in the in the world yet but it's good to know that that's coming the Pfizer version is as you know the you may recall the FDA had asked for submission early on in the fall of or in late winter but it turned out that the formulation that was being used for the six months to five year olds because was was not giving a strong and immune response with the two doses so they have added a third dose and they are not yet at the point where they've submitted data for for the outcomes of that yet it may be by late spring early summer they may have that so it is potential that will have vaccination for younger kids as probably maybe even as early as late summer so that's something to look for in terms of why we've put the cut off at 70 we looked at a lot of the data of who was getting infected who was having waning immunity over time and they also the program that we have around clinically extremely vulnerable which is different most other provinces have not identified that group of people and we look at our hospitalization data so who is it that is vaccinated with three doses that is ending up having more severe illness and it is people with severe clinically immune compromising conditions so people with solid organ transplants for example hematologic malignancies and so they need an extra boost an extra dose and we've also seen that there really is very good protection from three doses for most people up to age actually really up to age 80 but definitely up to age 70 and we see a little bit of an increase in hospitalizations over age 70 people who've had three doses and it bumps up again over age 80 so those are the people who got immunized first so their immunity is going down more quickly and as we get older our immune system fades away a little bit more quickly so that's where we're targeting this fourth dose and we need to find that balance of whether you need it and whether how long the protection will last and so for our data here in BC from the program that we've had with the intervals we've used it really is those groups of people who are most at risk and where they need that short-term protection so what we're seeing from other countries is that that fourth dose that second booster does give a boost up in protection against infection and also stimulates a stronger protection for more severe illness and and deaths but it also wanes again over time so what we want to do for most people who still have really good strong protection from their third dose and again i'll say if you haven't got that third dose go get it now that protection is good enough to get us through omicron and very very highly protective still for people staying out of hospital and preventing severe illness i think Dr Henry did a good job on sub questions two through six there but um i just i would just just say just on the first one i think you asked about how it's going in terms of take up i mean principally the focus has been on long-term care and on the first the first group of people who are clinically vulnerable people who have immune challenges i think in the latter group we've actually had quite a high take up and we'll report on that soon in terms of long-term care we're going through systematically as we did in october of 2021 the long-term care homes i would say overall the take up is slightly lower for fourth doses and for third but the real question will come in the coming weeks and we want to really encourage people who are over 70 or who are invited for their fourth dose to get it and all the other people because the big vaccination task is still all the people who haven't got their third doses yet we want to really encourage people to do that and also to say to others that Novavax is available and people who were considering that it's available you can call 1-833-838-2323 and and connect then the BC Pharmacy Association they'll be in touch for an appointment for Novavax so that's where we are now and we'll know more after these big bolus sort of big groups of people who are who are seeing who are going to be invited in the next two or three weeks we'll have a better sense of those over 70 probably on or around June 1st Explain why more than 600,000 doses of vaccine have had to be thrown out and why not then fast-track and I know it's sort of separate but could you prioritize groups like pregnant women for fourth doses to try to get more people vaccinated and then also for minister Dix I want to get a sense separate on the regulated colleges what sort of tools will be at people's disposal to understand who's vaccinating who isn't if they go to an office so in terms of wastage there's a there's a whole bunch of factors that go into that and actually our percent of vaccines that have been wasted are very low which is great as you know very early on when supply was an issue we were very focused on that a small percentage of the the 600,000 or so doses that have been have been expired they came to us with an end date that was relatively short and some of them have expired most of that we tried to give back through covax although we've also been able to make donations canada has donated quite a lot financially to covax so we're very aware of those issues but the the reality right now is that we have sufficient vaccine and when we have more providers so once it's out in in the community in pharmacies and the uptake is slow one-on-one that means that you may have wastage they have been trying very hard to to book people in at a time where you can use the whole vial but it is more important for us to make sure that people get their dose and don't get turned down for a dose then to preserve every dose in the vial as it was so critical very early on so I think we're very mindful we're very mindful of the wastage and we're being very careful about it the vast majority of it is now because there's not enough people to get the vaccines and there's several doses per vial that may be lost through pharmacies for example in terms of the regulated health professionals and I'll ask that and pregnant women see when I talked last time about you know age so we are not seeing breakthrough in pregnant women who have their three doses or pregnant people so we do again encourage people to get that first booster dose the third dose that is making a tremendous difference in prevention of transmission of infection and and there was a recent report out of Israel that sewed as much as 85 percent in the short term so that protects you from getting sick and it absolutely protects you from getting really sick so anybody who's pregnant needs to get their their third dose there's no need though as far as we can tell in terms of breakthrough infections etc for an additional booster dose at this point in terms of the regulated health professionals we are working at with each college about how to build that into the professional standards about how to notify somebody and I the the overriding interest is patient safety and making it safe for people to ask those questions so there are several ways that it could be it's for in-person services that we receive from a health care provider and it may be things like when you called a book an appointment you're asked if you have a preference to see a vaccinated or unvaccinated or makes a difference to you for those clinics where that's an issue so we are trying to work out those details in a way that protects privacy but also gives agency to people to make those decisions because it may be different depending on my risk and depending on what's happening in in the community so if we see rates go up in a community and I'm somebody who's more vulnerable then I may opt not to see somebody for an in-person treatment or postpone that if there's a time when there's a lot of circulation of virus on the other hand if I've just received a booster dose and I'm not particularly vulnerable it may not be as a decision that I'm I may not I may choose not to postpone a visit for example Katie D'Rosa Vancouver son can you give the percentage figure for the naturopathic practitioners of chinese medicine yes uh so the college of chiropractors 78.1 percent college of naturopathic physicians of bridge columbia 69.2 percent and the college of traditional chinese medicine practitioners and acupuncturists was 79 percent can you speak to why do you think it's so low and what can you do to boost that yeah so this is you know part of this I know in my discussions with the registers of the colleges are you know some people have been reluctant or slow to respond to the colleges need for this information so it is probably an underestimate as well we know that some regulated health professionals have views about the vaccination and we have only recently had alternatives to the mRNA vaccines available for some people and that's an important choice for some practitioners so this will change over time and I hope that seeing this and seeing that the vast majority in every regulated health professional will be reassuring to people and will help people um have that discussion with each other about the importance to the profession I would say and um all of the detailed numbers will be shared with the enterprise release and in addition to that will provide the list of the list of the number of registrants so you have a sense of the size of these health professional colleges I think be valuable I say this so the group of people that will be I think um most unhappy with those results are the vast majority of people in those three colleges who are vaccinated will be the naturopathic physicians who have first volunteer became part of our vaccination programs for example in Vancouver coastal health and in Fraser health and all the people who work in that sector they'll be disappointed with that because um all of if you look at the 18 health professional colleges and nurses will be well north of 95 percent when those numbers are released they are now in our numbers for the health care system all of the health professional colleges except those three are in the 90 percent range and I think those are are very good results and I think those numbers will be higher there and the vast majority of people in those three professions are vaccinated and I think it's that group of people which will may have more concerns with some of their colleagues who have for whatever reason chosen not to be vaccinated and uh but that's the reality we're facing the public can see that now and um and you know all of these professions have robust debates within them I'm sure and I'm sure this will be a subject of discussion amongst all of those as we seek to raise vaccination rates amongst every group in society thank you we're going to go to the phone now and first question is from Justine Hunter thank you um Dr. Henry do you believe that the public should know whether an individual practitioner is vaccinated or not it sounds like privacy has come a button in the way of that level of disclosure yeah so what we are working through is how to make it so that it's not uh a personal disclosure personal information in a way that protects um the practitioner but the overriding public interest is patient safety and that is our overriding interest so it has to be done in a way that doesn't put a person who has concerns about receiving certain services in person um and wants to make that informed decision themselves doesn't put them at a disadvantage and I say that in a in a way um we one of the um programs that we've talked about a lot is it's okay to ask your healthcare provider if they clean their hands well I know that many people including when I was supporting my grandmother in law when she was in hospital she would never ask because she was afraid that it would somehow be uh held against her or that she didn't have she was afraid to ask those questions so we don't want to put people in those positions particularly people who are feeling very vulnerable so I am working with the colleges and we all have the same goal to make sure that people are comfortable receiving those services and feel safe to do it so we're working through the details of what that will look like but it will be a process that will do its best to protect the privacy of individual practitioners but give people the information they need to make an informed decision Justine do you have a follow-up I do thanks Dr. Henry I just from reading your work over the years I think you've been a real advocate for vaccination of medical practitioners and I'm just trying to get a sense of whether your objective here is to ensure that an individual can find out whether a practitioner that they want to see is vaccinated or not or whether you believe that the privacy rights of those practitioners is a higher value like everything nothing is simple on this and and yes there's I've done a lot of work on things like blood-borne pathogens in health care workers infected with blood-borne viruses and the risk to the health setting so and it there is ethical principles around protection of privacy that are very very important and there's principles around patient safety that are that trump everything so it is finding that balance and I don't know there are ways that we can do that we've done it for you know surgeons who are infected with HIV for example people who have hepatitis so we have models that we can use and we're just working through how to do that. Next question is from Lisa Yuzda. Hello Dr Henry and this is I'm going to get a bit personal but I know that there's a lot of people that want to know as you said like we all know someone who's had COVID and we're wondering have you made it through so far without it or have you had it and what was your experience? No I I've managed to clean my hands enough I guess and wear masks in the right places but now I have not yet but I I do know that I've been around people that have and you know I think we see the results of vaccination and how protective it is but we also know that you know people who have a lot of contacts with many different people I will say in the last few weeks I have done more things it was slightly terrifying at first but going out to I was able to go to the opera for the the here in in Victoria a couple of weeks ago and you know it was just I think for me personally and I know for many people that I hear about missing those things that gave us joy in life and we went through a period of time when it was so hard and we couldn't get together with people and we couldn't hear live music in a theater with others and that is so important for we're we're social creatures and we need that connectedness so I think again we've always tried to find that balance of the negative consequences of the measures that we have in place and being able to do the best that we can to protect people through this and I know it's been we're all on our own path in this and some people are more or less anxious to get there but I think we're in a reasonable place right now and I just encourage people to continue to be kind to each other and to remember those moments of joy that have gotten us through this past two and a half years. Lisa do you have a follow-up? You said earlier you know that we are still in this pandemic but often you know you go out to stores or to the hockey game or things like that and it really doesn't look like it anymore. I'm wondering do you think that in general we're doing okay and still responding in an appropriate way and that we'll be able to bounce into a different place if we need to in the fall or do you have concerns? You know I'm always concerned but yeah I think the fact that we have vaccinations has led us to this place and we only have to look at places like Hong Kong and Shanghai to see what can happen if you don't have that level of protection that these vaccines have given us they are a magic bullet. They're not perfect and so that's why we all need to to do that day-to-day assessment of where we are but we've done this before we used to do this if I'm not feeling good you know don't go to school today or don't go to work today stay away from that big gathering if I'm not feeling well we need to be even more cautious about that because we know this virus is still out there and thankfully in most people now because we have this level of protection from vaccination they're not getting severe severe illness but some people are still getting long COVID for example including children and we've seen that be a problem so we need to be extra cautious we need to to take those measures that we know help and you know check ourselves every day how am I feeling today maybe I need to stay away or do this remotely and just be respectful of that as we go through this next period of time I think we're going to be in a period of relative ease for the next little while but we all have to pay attention to to what might happen in the fall and if we look at data around the world I mean it's it's shocking to think but there's close to a million people now who have died in the United States at least recorded and probably more and if we look around Canada you know we have not had that level of of of devastation and tragedy but we've had a we've had enough so we do need to be cautious as we go through this and we need to be prepared that we're going to see a surge in the fall and there are things that we'll have to go back to to remember about how we can do that I hope and I expect that we'll never have to put in orders that require people to do those things like we did when we didn't know what was going on over the last two and a half years but we will rely on each other to take those measures when we start to see things going to increase in transmission again you know I I would say Lisa that we're in a very challenging period for the health care system it should be said though that we have similar levels of people off sick and a lot of us and the principal difference between now and other times was COVID-19 as we did in January which people recall was at the height of the Omnicron variant of concern I think you can draw two conclusions from that is that it's very challenging when you've got compared to the normal time this week we had between 17 and 18,000 people who missed at least one day doesn't mean they're off sick all day but at least miss one day as a result of that across the health care system and that's a significant number of people now there are always because it's a huge health care system a huge number of employees a lot of people off sick but this presents challenges for everyone else and I think as well you're seeing because of what's happening in society a return to health care as well in a dramatic way just at this time so I think people have to keep in mind that it's happening the second thing I'd say though is some extraordinary things are happening in spite of that consider that and consider that we had one of our most most recent reporting period the most significant number of surgeries that we've ever had in the BC health care system in spite of that it shows how dedicated how hard people are working on producing the best possible outcomes but this is a this is a challenging time because the pandemic is still here it's still having effects those effects are different but they continue to challenge our health care system and health care professionals and health care workers everywhere next question is from a rob Monroe hi Dr Henry thank you for this I just wonder in the the numbers for the colleges is there any breakdown for by health region I know the interior health region is about five percent below the rest of the provincial average in terms of greater vaccination so is there that kind of difference here as well the colleges no we have not broken it down the colleges are are a provincial level entity so I'm afraid there's no no breakdown by by regions at all do you have a follow-up Rob you'd also mentioned about the the BA 2.12 and it's coming up in certain regions of the province and again concern the interior sometimes has led the way in some of these things and is that a problem here you know what there there has been an increase in the 2.12 and I I'm just trying to remember the latest whole genome sequencing you know our those pictorials we have with the different colors it is on the VCCDC website and there has been slight variations in different areas of the province of which strain we're seeing and yes we are seeing some of the BA 1.12 in in the interior and I believe the island was the other area where we saw the most but I can check on that for you next question is from Rob Buffham oh hi thanks for taking my question my first question is on behalf of a colleague and it's directed I think primarily to minister Dix but if Dr Henry wanted to weigh in would be great too it relates to the the rally with nurses on the lawn going on right now in front of the legislature who are expressing their concern that the healthcare system is buckling under pressure and they're upset about staffing issues working conditions and patient care in light of what's going on with the healthcare crisis in the province what would you say to those nurses throughout their minister Dix and you know and they're expressing their concerns and I will turn this to minister Dix just to say that that I can absolutely empathize I think across the board in our healthcare system it has been a long long road it's a long road and it's one we're still on the the COVID-19 public health emergency was declared really we started dealing with it in healthcare at the beginning of 2020 the public health emergency that is the overdose public health emergency what is from 2016 and continues on as all of you know that enormous cost to people in our communities and so these are real challenges in the healthcare system now on the issue of nurses we've seen since 2017 because we were low in Canada prior to that as everyone knows dramatically low we've seen the fastest increase of any province and registered nurses we've seen a doubling in the number of nurse practitioners we've seen a very large increase in the number of licensed practical nurses of registered psychiatric nurses you see that in the pure numbers of the nursing colleges as well and and all of those things are true and we've added now 602 new training spaces for nurses in all those categories of nurses which is significant we have twice as many nurse practitioners practicing as we did in 2017 and that's a real achievement of the system but I would say now let's give you an example about nurses say in the interior region you're asking about that in Kamloops for example where they've gone through two years of COVID-19 and the overdose public health emergency and the heat dome and the wildfires which saw people moving and moving back across the whole region and the floods consequences of that for nurses working at Royal Inland Hospital one of our and who a team of health professionals and healthcare workers have done exceptional things under circumstances no one has seen and even within the healthcare system are extraordinary so I think nurses have been through and all health professionals and all healthcare workers have been through an enormous amount and that's why we're taking the actions we're taking specific action not rhetoric specific actions that means 6600 more people hired in our age cap program in our long-term care program you'll recall the 7000 that were promised in august of 2020 the program is not over yet that means the leveling up of wages for healthcare workers that means the repatriation of healthcare workers who were being paid poverty wages in the acute care system could work 25 years in healthcare not even have a pension that's changing and all the recruitment efforts for doctors and health sciences professionals the efforts on ambulance paramedics because we've seen an increase of 26 percent in ambulance calls in four years and you can only meet that especially for purple and red calls with more people and still it has been immensely difficult and today not some other day but today it's extremely challenging with a number of people largely due to COVID-19 off sick and the challenges of the healthcare system of people in many cases returning the healthcare system it's a difficult time and our nurses are doing incredible work and I am with them why I was with them at the vigil last night why I'm in regular work consultation with them why on the some of the proposals I mentioned we're working with them to see that they're implemented and why importantly in health human resources we got to take steps to make sure we retain those nurses we have experienced nurses we have and so I would say to them that I have that I have heard their message now and not just now during the height of the delta variant in the early days of the pandemic when nurses didn't just serve as outstanding health professionals they are but sometimes and often as the only family people had when circumstances in both long-term care and acute care had provided less access those are moments in all of these public health emergencies that no one involved will forget no one involved will be unchanged by and the what we can do now is to respond and and continue to build together a better healthcare system for the future. Do you have a follow-up question Rob? I do thanks for that my question is we've talked about the fact that we are still in what's been called a pandemic I've heard people describe it as we're still in the sixth wave I don't know if you want to weigh in on that Dr. Henry but I'm most curious to know about you know this idea of motivating more people to get a booster shot as well as having a higher rate of vaccination for kids because BC does trail behind other provinces in that regard do you think part of the the challenge now is that so many people as we've talked about know someone who's had COVID recently and it's been relatively mild compared to what it would have been earlier or what people expect I think part of it's that I I'm not sure the wave terminology I've never been a fan of it but I'm not sure it's particularly helpful you know we're going to see it come and go over time but and yes we saw from the national advisory committee on immunization that we do get a boost in immunity from infection and and that combination of being vaccinated and then having particularly Omicron even a mild infection that does give you a boost but it's short relatively short lived so now's the time if you were had an infection in January or February it's time to get that booster dose now and I know many people had put it off because they had had a recent infection and the national advisory committee says you know three months as long as three months to put off getting that extra dose and that gives you the boost on the boost instead of just having them too close together so if you have had a recent infection now it's time to get your booster it's going to help maintain that protection and maintain protection as we go into the next phase of whatever comes at us next so it is really important same with children I know there was a lot of young people who had infections over the last couple of months that doesn't mean you don't need the vaccine the two of them work together it gives you better protection in the long run and we are starting to see you know young children from other jurisdictions in the world where even mild infections can lead again in younger people to long-lasting complications from COVID-19 so it is important to get immunized to get protected and now's the time to do that appointments are available in pharmacies around the province I know it's easy right now there's lots of availability so I encourage people to go out in and get that extra protection. Our next question is from Karen Larson CBC. Oh hi there thank you very much can you hear me? Go ahead okay thank you my question is have you detected any cases of childhood hepatitis in BC and are you seeing any links with COVID? So yes this is one of those things that we've been watching along with our colleagues across the country we have a case definition and it is a reportable condition in British Columbia I put a notice out to all physicians about that last week to remind them that this is a new phenomenon we still don't yet understand it is mostly causing illness we're up to about 200 reported cases worldwide in younger children most of them under the age of five there has been a stronger association not with SARS-CoV-2 or COVID infection but with an adenovirus infection particularly adenovirus 41 we have had one case under investigation here in British Columbia but they turned out not to be related to this so currently we do not have anybody who meets the probable or confirmed case definition here in BC but we are watching and we're working with our pediatric colleagues yeah so this is still a bit of a mystery globally there's a lot of looking into it we have a very detailed what we call case report form if you're interested it's on the VCCDC website to help us get a better understanding of each individual case and what might be the link there is some speculation that it could be related to co-infections either with SARS-CoV-2 or with some other infection or something that we just don't know yet so that is a really intriguing investigation and we're monitoring for it here but no we have not seen any cases here in BC yet. Karen, do you have a follow-up? I was hoping to go ahead and answer in French if it's all possible if it's not I'll ask another question that maybe I could get an answer in French for if we can make this work. Sure, ask your second question and maybe you can answer both. Okay great so in French I'm sorry I'm just scrolling through our list here you Dr. Henry you seem to indicate earlier that changes to visitation rules in long-term care might not be immediate can you give people who really want to get in to see their loved ones a bit of a timeline on when they can expect all facilities to come into compliance with the updated rules? My understanding is that those are in effect now I don't know that any facilities are not in compliance so there are no limitations there still is a requirement for testing and for visitors to be fully vaccinated we know that there still is transmission happening in long-term care homes and as we know it can be devastating when it gets into care homes thankfully and with the high levels of vaccination and the variants that we're seeing right now even in care homes we're mostly seeing milder infections but those are still important protections that we have in place still. Thank you very much and we'll see you see you soon. Thanks everyone that's all the time we have.


We've got a fun unboxing for you today. This is the LeBuff Limited Edition Alexander Hamilton Fallon Pin. It's got a navy blue box with the branding on the outside and it's a magnetic closure. Inside you have your limited edition pin card and info and then it comes with a box of six ink cartridges and this is a standard international cartridge converter pin so you can use the cartridges or converter you'd like but it does come with an ink converter and cartridges. All right, this is your Alexander Hamilton fountain pin. It's got a spring metal clip and it does have the black cap with the profile in gold there on the finial and the LeBuff name on the pin clip. You have your double ring at the bottom of the cap. The dates are noted underneath those double rings and his signature is on the violet colored resin barrel and it's got a golden lay. You do have a plated stainless steel nib and it does have the branding of the manufacturer on it again and you have a black section to match your cap. As I said before, this is a cartridge converter fountain pin and it comes with a converter included and it's just a push-in converter so it's easy to pop in and out. If you want to use standard international ink cartridges instead you just remove that and pop in your ink cartridge and it does have a threaded cap and it's postible and that violet is the color of Alexander Hamilton's eyes so that's a bonus. For more information visit pinchley.com.


Hey everybody, Lance Goyke here. Today we're talking about wrist pain during your pushups. So there can be a lot going on. I've talked about shoulder pain, I've talked about elbow pain. Those are generally more common than wrist pain during pushups. Maybe wrist pain might be a little more common than elbow pain, but those videos go over some intricate details of rib cage positioning, of core strength if we wanna call it that to use some terms that maybe you are familiar with. And you should definitely watch those because the secret is wrist pain is the same as elbow pain. I still look at it the same way. I still want you to make sure that the things that are near your center of mass are moving really well so that you can transfer forces and not put them into, you can transfer forces into the ground and not into your elbow or into your wrist or into your shoulder. Okay, so watch those, because they will help you. In that order too, by the way, shoulder video first, elbow video second. Okay, now, what else might be going on? Wrist pain, overloading the wrist joint somehow, especially if we talk about the stuff we mentioned in the elbow video where you have some torques and twists going on, that can be really common if you're only feeling wrist pain on one side rather than the other.  So you gotta look into keeping the ab tone. I want you to shift your focus away from the wrist and into the outer lower abdominals while you're doing this.  I like to have people hands under shoulders. If my hands are way back here and I'm trying to do a push up, as I get to the top, I really, really ask for my wrist to move a lot. You see like this, oh yeah, that doesn't feel good, okay? I'm putting my joint in a locked position there and I'm compressing it just with my body weight, not necessarily with even outrageous muscular tone or poor technique or anything. I'm just compressing it. So some people can get away with that. If you're trying to do stuff like that, you know, some gymnastics type stuff, but what I would generally recommend is if, one, if you're trying to get your gymnastics stuff, I'm gonna do a video series on this, but you have to progress through it. You have to be very particular about it because your body just isn't ready for it. So you have to take tiny, tiny steps. Try moving your hands under your shoulders and see if that helps. Man, that's a good one.