You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live.  I'm a snipe, I get upset. She's, yeah, she's not normal, she's something else. She's beyond, she goes beyond a remit of a wife, beyond it, to help me. I think about suicide all the time, all the time. I wake up in the morning thinking about it and I think the reason, there's a few reasons why I've never gone through with it. One, because my wife. Second, because my dog. And thirdly, somebody's got to find me. And if somebody finds me, I've infected them with my misery. Even when I'm gone, somebody else is suffering because they need to find me. I'm not crazy, right? I'm not crazy, but I have a voice in my head that says I'm vile.  I say to my therapist who I see, I say, I feel sad, so, so sad. And I can't, I can't shift it, can't shift this sadness. Can't, can't find an end to it, really. And I miss, I miss me, I miss who I was. And I put one round in, cocked it, I put it in my mouth. I remember it slide and it was coming out. Boom, we're on. Today's guest, Craig Harrison. How are you? I'm good, mate. I'm good. I watched your story on Ladd Bible, phenomenal. The power in it from being a sniper, you've done four tours. The stresses of your life, you've put on the line, like, what you've gone through, what you're battling not just when you were in the British Army but what you had to battle after it. I was blown away by it. That's why I've been trying to get you on for months. But first and foremost, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. As I said, I'm still vertical, so I'm still pushing forward. You're looking well. Yeah, I feel okay. Yeah. Did a good gym session today, he says? Yeah, four o'clock. Four a.m. Every day. That's dedication. Yeah, bar weekends, that's time for the wife. Yeah, a bit of family time. Yeah. So, how did the rules go back to the start of my guess, Craig? Where you grew up, how it all began? I was born in Cheltenham, in the Cotswolds area, the Malverns. Just riding horses. I was just dedicated to horses. My mum got me a horse, had a good childhood, it wasn't bad. And from there, my mum sort of grew me to join the army because there was nothing in Cheltenham. People go to die, you know. And so, if I'd have stayed there, I would have grown old and died in Cheltenham. So, my brother joined the army first, and then I joined the household cavalry. I wanted to be a farrier. My grandad always told me, get a trade, get a trade. And I thought, yeah, I'd be a farrier, you know, because obviously the farrier that used to come to shoe my horses when I was younger, he seemed to be minted, you know. And I thought, yeah, a bit of money in the back pocket, a good trade. I joined the household cavalry, joined the army, and then become a farrier. What was your late grade? Yeah, I was a bit of a loner at school. I had one friend, and he was my cousin, Tom. He was a year older than me. But I didn't do too well at school at all. I used to bunk off all the time. And what was the point, you know, spent more time in the woods than I did actually at school, but left with nothing, you know, and a bit of a loner got picked on, really, from a size, big feet, my big ears, sort of grew into them now, I think. But yeah, quite, quite, quite at school. I didn't get too much trouble. Did that affect you growing up then, getting a billion? Yeah, really, because I was worried about going out, you know, going downtown, and he says, go downtown, do this for me. And I didn't want to do it because, well, I lived, it was gangs of lads, you know, and they always used to pick, and I can remember the gang now quite clearly in my head, you know, and I got me on back. Eventually? Yeah. Was that a relief for you? Was that a sense of revenge? Yeah, yeah. I remember joining the army, coming home on my first leave, and seeing him in McDonald's, and I told my mate Tom, I said, just down by the door, I took the broom handle off this broom mop, and I went to town. And they shut McDonald's down for two days. Yeah, I got my own back, self-satisfaction.  Not really. Or was it just one of those things that happened?  And just years and years of just being picked on, getting bullied. I thought, that's enough, this is what I'm going to do. So I did it, yeah. How was that feeling after that?  But I think this is what the army breathed into you, you know, they breathed that, they knocked that civilian out of you and build you into a man. And that's why my first leave, I came back as a man and I thought, no, I'm not having this no more. If I need to progress in the army, I need to be a man. And the opportunity came and it was there and I took it and I ran with it. What was the age that you joined there? Was it 16? 16 years old, yeah. So it's not like a young boy. Yeah, I did the guards depot down in Purbrite and it was the guards depot. Not now, it's an all arms place. But because the House of Cavalry is part of the household division with the guards, you have to do your training with them.  But I think it made me a better person What was it like joining them for the first time? Like being away from home? Were you away from home at 16? 16, yeah. I think my mum sort of like me put me in the line to join the army at an early age from about ten years old, I think. So I was doing my washing, doing my ironing, doing everything chores and everything. So she was building me up to it. So leaving home was, it didn't bother me. It didn't bother me. It was nice to get out of the house, really.  This is it. And never look back. It's like my wife told me. She goes, you never complain. You never complain. You're up early in the mornings, you train, you've got to work for nine hours, you do this, you do that. You never complain about doing it and I never complain about joining the army. None of the best things I've ever done. You've done four tours? I've done, well, ten altogether. What? Yeah, I've done three Bosnia, two Kosovo, three Iraq and two Afghan. That's a lot of tours. Yeah, it is, yeah. So see, when you were going through in 16, 17, 18, did you have a plan that you wanted to go down as a sniper or were you just... No, I joined the army to be a farrier. That was it.  And I was a bit dyslexic as well, you know. So when I got an opportunity to do a pre-assessment in the forge, my homework at night was more illustrated than writing and it wasn't good enough for them and plus my face didn't fit. So I didn't manage to get in the forge. How did you end up being a sniper then? Because people say that you're one of the best snipers ever. How do you think we're tackling? How do you feel that? When I was young, I used to do triathlons. So I was running, swimming, riding and shooting, you know, over a weekend. So my shooting skills were... I was alright, yeah, with an air rifle and how did I become a sniper is the household cavalry was nothing to do with snipering. It's all to do with reconnaissance, moving forward, gathering information of the enemy, restricting back, you know, we would go further. The furthest from us would be special forces and then it'd be an household cavalry and then it'd be the rest of the army, you know. And suddenly an opportunity came up where snipers were allowed in the household cavalry. So I thought this is what I want to do. I want to go at it all and have a go. And as I excelled, yeah, it was like because I was a country boy anyway and I spent most of my time wagging off school in the countryside. I understood it, you know, I understood about backdrops, aerial drop, front drops, camouflage and concealment, shape, silhouette, shine, stuff like that. And yeah, I excelled. How do snipers get treated with other regiments? Because I know other regiments fight with each other and stuff like that, but how do snipers get treated? Because I have a lonely job on all those. If you're out and doing a job with a sniper there's both of these, is that correct? Yeah. So how do you get treated? Is it not as if you have another battalion or how does it work?  But you get treated like tramps of the army. Do they? Yeah, because you're scruffy.  You don't want to go away talking or stuff like that. You just want to stay in your little unit. You know, I think you end up doing that naturally instead of mingling.  As you used to do about street fighting back in the day, early years? Yeah, when I was at Nicebridge, yeah, down in Houston it was. There's a gym down there. I don't think it's there anymore. Yeah, I met a guy who said, you're interested in making some money. And I said, yeah, I'm interested. And he said, it's all to do with fighting. And the first time I went down there, I thought it was a bit out of my league, you know. And you end up having three fights a night. You could win up to about 300 to 600 quid a fight. It depends who's booking better on you. But the idea is always lose a fight. Never win all your fights because then the people won't take you outside and do you over.  So there's a way of doing it and making money. Did the army training help you with the fighting? Or was that just a release for you? It was more of a release. I had a lot of anger when I was younger. My grandfather died when I was young and he was like a father figure to me. And I think that all bottled up inside me, you know. And I had a sheet of ice and all this anger and anxiety and stress was holding this ice wall, you know. And then obviously it crumbled years on and the situation we're in now in my life. Yeah. What's training like for us, Naipa? It's hard. Yeah, it's hard. You have to do, it's nine weeks altogether. I think it's extended now, I'm not quite sure but it might, it was nine and a half weeks, nine weeks. And you do a shooting phase first. Anyone can shoot a rifle. You know, I could give you a rifle now with a scope on it. I can lay you down and go right over there. Put this on your scope and you'll hit it. That's the easy bit. The hard bit is the snipering bit, the camouflage and concealment, reading a map, sketching, observing, staying still. That's the hardest bit of being a sniper. You know, of the whole course. And a lot of people pass the shooting and fell on the sniper bit to become a sniper.  So you can go back to the regiment as a sharpshooter. But to pass the sniper phase is an extra tick in your balls. What sort of targets do you have when you're training? We just call them huns heads.  A full size, a bit of paper to give people a rough idea. Yeah.  And you had to stay there for 24 hours.  But it could be 24 hours. It could be 19 hours. It could be 18 hours. It could be an hour, half an hour, you know. And suddenly you're nodding dog because you've been there for so long looking for the scope and you hear five, four, three, two, one, target down. You're like that. What the... I didn't see it. I didn't see it. Luckily I saw mine. I saw mine. And it's got a letter on it and have like a fluorescent k on a white background.  You're like an assassin.  It's not. The first job of a sniper is to gather lifetime information of the battlefield. So it's your job to go out there, get information and then bring that information back. And once that information is back and they can work out what to do, then you go and take the target out. That's the whole idea.  No. Did you just love it? Love it. That was your passion? Yeah, I loved it. Absolutely loved it. Yeah. Because see when you're speaking about it, how you feel alive? It gives me good... It's funny enough, my daughter's getting married in December. You're not going to get your sniper out. Yeah. And my wife was going through some photos and I found some photos of when I did my snipers course and it brought about a lot of memories, a lot of memories than I thought. And it's funny enough, because every weekend we had off, I'd go back home and then I'd go into camp into the tailor shop and I'd be making modifications to my ghillie suit, putting pads on my trousers, trying to make myself better. Where lads were just relaxed, I was still doing stuff to strive to be better. Did you see changes in yourself going through the training? Did you see changes to be drilled into that person that don't sleep, look for targets, noises, whatever it is you do for training? Did you totally start seeing changes in yourself or did you just become so consumed about what you're being taught and you don't really realise that you were changing?  I'm a sniper, this is what it's doing. People do sniper courses never fire a shot in their whole career, you know. Some people go on tour like the Marines, they've got all the parrots, all the rifles.  But I think you notice the change when you take your first shot. And then you become a bit of a loner. You do become a bit of a loner. They say you do courses in the army and you become trades, you do crew commanders and you have a trade and then you do your snipers course and that's a trade. But now I'm a big believer in saying that snipers wasn't a trade, it was a course. Now, now looking back at it. You see me again through training and you get called up for your first mission. What do you call it? A job? How is it you call it? Yeah, a mission. A mission. So when you get called up for your first mission, what's the feeling like if you've been trained that much that it becomes normal? There's still nerves there that you're thinking, okay, it's game time.  Can I have a quick word with you? Now, how did this happen? No one's going to question it, you know, because you're doing your job. You're doing what you're being paid for. So after that, it gets, when you get your next mission, you're like, I'm up for this now. I'm up for this. I know I can do it. I know what I've done the first time, you know, because I can remember it clear as day in my head, the first mission I went on, you know, and then second mission becomes second nature, third mission, fourth mission, fifth mission. It's good to be scared.  You know, you become more, you become more in tune to surroundings. If you've got cocky with it, you're going to make mistakes. That's what I believe. How much training did you do before you went on your first mission? You do, well, you do six months low level training in England.   There's a lot there. Is it just training to get targets? Trainings get targets. And you get talked to after.  So it's meant to lower down PTSD, you know, but it doesn't happen all the time and some regiments are better than others. When you get called off your first mission, where did you end up? In Iraq, in the desert. What was that feeling for you? We were, yeah, we were in a mug, which is a moving, sort of like moving vehicles around, and we're moving around the desert. And they was, every time we stopped for a long period of time, we were 100 miles away from anywhere. We're in the Mesa desert in Iraq, 100 miles away from anywhere. And we would get artillery mortared, and then we'll have to move somewhere else mortared. And we noticed that a motorbike was following us. Every time we went somewhere, a motorbike would follow us. And we realized that this motorbike was dicking us. He was giving information, coordinates to where we were, so the artillery can be popped in on us. So I got the green light to take this guy out. He was 675 yards away.  So that's because of the heat shimmer. And there's like four to five different heat shimmers that you can get. And so you have to work that out. So you have to shoot low. And yeah, I shot the guy. And how long did you have to wait for your target? I know some of the times you've went days, but did you just set up and then look for the target and then shoot as it take hours? I took myself away from the patrol itself. So he just thought he was looking at the patrol. And I could definitely, I could PID him. There's no point. He could just be like a guy who's interested in vehicles. I had to PID him.  So he had all the indicators that he was dicking us. So, and I took myself away a few hours. He came into view because we guarantee as soon as we stop, we've got artillery, you know, and he came into view and I took him out. And what was that feeling for you, for like the hours leading up to his nerves or were you just cold, calm and ready to do your job? Cool. Yeah, it was weird, weird feeling, you know. It was more afterwards.  And like I said before, you're expecting that tap on the shoulder. You feel in trouble because of what you've just done, you know. It's unnatural to do that sort of thing, but you're in the Army. And that's what the Army is all about.  But I always expected that tap on the shoulder, but the taps on the shoulder I got were, you know, well done. You're doing all right. Good job. Yeah, good job. So see when you like killed the target, is that, like what's that feeling then? Is it like a adrenaline feeling that I've done a good job? I'm doing the right thing or is that just move on to the next? It's your job at the end of the day. It's your job, yeah. But the hardest bit was I had to go up to that target and PID him. So it wasn't the fact of just taking the shot and walking away and let somebody else deal with it. I dealt with it myself as well. So I went up to the target and get information on him. I took maps off him. I took the radio off him, took his AK off him.  The throttle was caught in the sand. So the motorbike was like really revving. The back wheel was gone lunatic. And yeah, he passed away. Is that the hardest thing? Is that harder than killing a person to actually seeing them dead? Yeah, because you've done that. You've done that. And you're still rushing after it. You're still getting that bit of a, you know, and like I said before, it's when you slow down. It's when you've got a bit of downtime and you're expecting that look of the shoulder, tap on the shoulder. But after a week, that's how long it lasted, a week. And after a week, it sort of dissipated and went away. And next mission came along and you feel right because I've done my first mission well, second mission is going to be okay. I'm not going to get a tap on the shoulder. So see me again through that, like those motions and everything that do you get time to, okay, you take a few days off or is it just straight back into the job?  Yeah, sometimes you're full on. But majority of the time it's more downtime and you go on patrols and you have a mission and you have some downtime. Because the downtime is important. You know, you need to have that downtime to get your thoughts together.  So see when you're on tour and if you kill someone then you have to go and look at the body.  Yeah, without a doubt. When I brought the world record, I didn't know I'd brought the world record at the time. And then I got deployed onto a ridgeline to look into this village. And because I had done so much devastation on that tour, they sent an out-of-season fighter. Now an out-of-season fighter is not an Afghan guy. It could have been a Chechen. It could have been a Russian. It could have been anything, you know, a foreigner sniper to hunt me down. So every time I got deployed somewhere they were so many trying to find me. So that was...  That was correct, yeah. How does that make you feel about it? Scared? Constant? Yeah, constantly looking over your shoulder. And funny enough, I still look over my shoulder now. You know, I'm still aware of what's going on around me. Like we said earlier, it's probably the training you've had. It probably is. But I'm very aware of my surroundings. Yeah, because I picture up from the train station and he says, let's just stop here because there's two people behind you. There's that noise and stuff. Noise and people just walk so close up behind you and it makes me feel uncomfortable. So let's just stop here. Have you ever said to anyone, look back off? No. No. No.  And she's talking. And then she'll stop and she'll go, great. And I'm back there somewhere waiting for people to pass.  I know a lot of people, as a job and you're helping save troops your own. Troops to then obviously go on and whatever targets you're doing, whatever jobs you're doing. So when you started moving through and it becomes easier then to then kill people and do the missions without, it's just normal. Yeah, I think killing's always the second priority. You know, like I said before, but it does become easier. You become quite numb to it, you know.  Yeah. And that's what it's about. What's the longest you've stayed on a job to have a target? 10 days. 10 days. Without moving? Without moving. On this ridgeline, yeah. And how do you do the toilet and stuff? I just, I dug a trough between my legs with my feet and ended up peeing, just peeing there or peeing like the, you know, the big containers, you get the hand sanitizer in, you end up peeing in them. They can fold up. You end up shitting in a little tub where a tub so you're not leaving any ground sign behind. Yeah. Is that in your mind as well?  Yeah. Cross your mind, is that not an issue?  It looks like leukocide. So I know he's dehydrated too much.  You know, there's certain DNA in cigarette butts you can take DNA off that and go back and realise, yeah, that's still warm. Yeah, he hasn't been here long. What cigarette maker is it? Oh, that's an Englishmake. You know, there's loads of information that you can get from that. So the idea is, is take everything away with you.  Yeah, you call it an aging pit and what you do, you get like like four foot by four foot square and you put grids in it. And in that grid, you put an apple core and that one grid will become one day and each day you move it and you keep moving it and moving it and moving it until it comes to the last grid which would be two weeks or a week and see how mouldy and rotten it is and you're seeing the transformation of that apple core and it's called an aging pit or an aging grid and that's what they do as well. Do it with cigarette butts as well because they fade after a while and you sort of like get tuned into that you go, yeah, that's about a week old that's two days old so somebody's been here two days ago I'm not going to be here I'm going to move somewhere else because there's a cigarette butt there so there's inhabitants so you move somewhere else. That's mad. You see it in the films you see them picking up cigarettes they're touching the urine and stuff and you think that's just a bit far-fetched but that happens, yeah? Yeah, it does, yeah. Shit, man. So I'm about an intelligence to go through to be learning stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Did you ever turn down a job, Craig? No. You can't turn down jobs in the army. No, that's refusing as a soldier. You know, you got to do what you got to do. And how do you get that? Do you go right? When do you get the information intelligence to where you're going? On the day? Yeah, on the day. So you'll have an old group where everyone goes into this old group and then they go, right, yeah, we need snipers on this. We need Overwatch for this. We need this. We need this. Yeah, we need heavy armaments. We need artillery support, you know, and then they will go through your role as a sniper. You said, right, you're going before everyone else. You're going this hill. You'll observe any movement any enemy movement at all. Let us know if there's any enemy movement. If there's not, then the task will go forward. But if there's any movement in there, so it all relies on you in a way. So see the 10 days you were on a mission. Did you sleep? You catnap for the day. Yeah. And like what? Like a burst of 20 minutes? 20 minutes. 20 minute catnap, because I have number two with me and he would catnap as well. He would stay awake, I would catnap just because he had, but usually the number two would have a spot in scope out. But on this occasion, we both had rifles out. So if one of us could take the shot, one of us could take the shot. Because it's usually number two is the better, the better at doing the observing, better at calculations. And number one is usually the better shot, but me and my mate were about as equal. So we just took it in turns.  Yeah. And it was like 1.6 miles or something? Yeah, 2,475 meters. And the gun that you were using, the rifle could only go 600 meters, is that correct? 1,500 meters. 1,500 meters. So how do you get a target from over a mile away? How do you judge that with the wind and the climate? How many things do you judge? Climate, atmosphere, barometric pressure, I think wind, but this day was perfect.  That was the day that, because I took the shot. I was only wearing a t-shirt, but not many people know I was stood up when I'd done the shot. I wasn't lying down. I was stood up against the wall when I took the shot. And it took me nine shots to get there in the morning. Because we were getting dicked. Do you want to know the story? Yeah, do you want to know the story? Yeah, yeah. Basically, there was an op-going, an operation going in where the Afghan army, mixed with British troops, were going into this village to clear this village out for the Taliban. And it was my job as Maverick 4.1 to give overwatch. And I had four other vehicles with me, my lads in there. So I had about 12 guys with me. And it was our job to give overwatch. But I could see all the Taliban in this village where I was. I could see them all. I could see them queuing up, waiting to attack this patrol coming in. And I informed them that you're going to get hit in a minute.  Now this kill zone is where it's easy for to get killed. And it's a box, usually a box.  There'd be no cover, no shelter, no nothing. And you just get massacred. I had with me an interpreter who had an icon. And an icon is a radio that is tuned into the Taliban frequency. So you can hear them talking to each other. And I was going, what they say now? What they say now? They go, yeah, they can see the patrol. They're walking up to the kill zone. And then it opened up. And then in the distance, I saw a glimpse. I thought, what the fuck's that? So I got my spot in scope out, which is more magnified than my scope and my rifle. I looked up and I could see a guy with a radio because I can see the antenna was glinting off the sun and next to a compound. And I thought, right, I'm going to have this fucker.  And I tried to laser it through laser binos because then it comes up the distance so I can do the calculations, but just kept coming up lines. So I knew it was over the range of the laser binos and at the range of my rifle. So what I did is bracket.  And you can see the dust in the compound wall. Next when I knew the interpreter said to me, he said they're on their own. And I said, what do you mean?  So the Taliban now can't see the patrol coming in. So they're fighting blind. So then I decided to move my vehicles into the kill zone itself to get covering fire for the patrol to move back so they can move back or they're injured and wounded.  And I thought they're going to flank us. He's found who I was because I was quite exposed on top of this hillside. They found out where I was and they're going to come round and flank us.  They're gone. They were in the distance on their camels going. And I thought something's going on here. They've sent something. They left everything, boarding kettles, a little old granny. They left her behind. She was just sat on this little stone. And so I turned around and I wasted this guy because I thought he was a marker. But he wasn't what he had done. He had knocked the water pump head off. He had flooded all the irrigation fields. So now my vehicles were just wheel spinning in the mud. They were stuck. And next thing I knew I saw splashes coming up and I thought, where is it? And I could see all my lads hitting the ground with a cover and the vehicles were getting pepper sprayed, everything. And I checked all the points while I engaged the enemy. I checked them all. I was checking them, checking them. I thought, I can't see anything. The only place I didn't check is where that compound was. And I checked and there was two Taliban up there. And I knew that I had shot there in the morning. This lasted for about three hours, this engagement. And so I thought, well, I need to do this because my men are going to get killed. So I fired my first shot and it missed. I saw it splash just in front. And I saw one guy stand up and as he stood up I fired again and the bullet took six seconds to fly there. So I'm firing. I'm going one, two, six. And the guy went down and I hit him here. And then the second guy was still firing. He stood up. I fired my third shot. And as I fired my third shot, I moved my rifle across and fired another shot. So this time I got two bullets in the air at the same time. One at three seconds, one at six seconds. Third one missed, fourth one hit him. And it hit him in the side here. And the reason why we knew where we hit him is because we wanted to get the weapon off him. Because if we don't get the weapon, it gets recycled back into the Taliban. But the weapon had already gone. It was just these guys. So seeing you shoot from that distance, is the pepper stall strong? No, the bullets slowed down to about 40. We worked it out to about 40 miles an hour. So if they had body armor on it, it would have just gone dink. But it didn't. It actually penetrated them. So slow has got to be worse, hasn't it? Really getting shot. Because that cavity has got opened slower as well. Did you not have to bend the bullet from higher up to come down as well or something? No, I had a quite clear shot from where I was. There's a picture of me actually taking the shot and my gunner took it. And from where I'm standing, it looks like I'm shooting like this. But I've had a clear view from where he was. But you've got to think over a thousand yards, the spin of the world, the carry-onus effect of the world takes effect of that bullet as well. So wherever you're facing in the world, you've got to take into consideration where that bullet's going. And I say to this day now, it was a fluke to this day now. Do you think that discredited in yourself from the knowledge and everything that you've achieved? Not really.  And I didn't even know the distance to where I was firing. And then the fact that an Apache came up behind me and he hovered up and I saw the pilot and I was going like that and he lasered it because I didn't want to see, but I wanted to know if there's any more enemy in that area. And they flew over and that's how he got GPS'd. And you got medals and stuff for that? You got medals? That's when you found out it was the longest sniper kill? Yeah. I did my medals parade when we came back off tour. I did my medals parade. And my men had seen the most action on that tour. So we had the most stories.  So it go to London District Media Ops and it will get censored saying you can't put that, can't put that. Yeah, you can put that in the paper now, but it never got censored. And my name was plastered all over the papers and that's when I started getting death threats. And that's when we went into hiding for three years.  It wasn't. We had police protection for the first year and then we moved to America. Because they printed your name?  Two Taliban leaders. We were orchestrating the attack from where they were. So what happens then? Were you alive for it to become a wanted man from some of the most ruthless people on this planet? Destroys it.  Where you have to leave the country, you leave everything behind. My wife especially, she really suffered. Everyone was going to me. Enjoy it, enjoy the moment, enjoy the moment. As soon as they opened the paper it was just about me. It was nothing about my lads or what they've been through which they deserve the credibility as well because it's not a one man army. I had 16 guys with me. I did that tour with 16 guys. I came back with six guys, original guys on that tour. We got hit hard. So it's to do with their credibility as well. And it was all about me. All about me. And my wife goes, I've got a funny feeling about this, Greg. I've got a really funny feeling about this. And everyone's going, no, let me enjoy it. Well done. Let me enjoy this. Let me enjoy that.  She was, yeah, she was right. So how did you know that you were a wanted man? The fact that he got printed in the paper which I've still got the paper clipings now which they wanted to kidnap a Muslim soldier and also behead me for what I achieved in Afghanistan. He was all plastered in the papers as well. When you went to America, where did you stay? Well, we stayed just in Washington, down south from Washington. In an army base? No. We just had a new life over there. Shit. Just makes you question everything as well, everything you do. Did you feel safe though? In America we did. Yeah. Yeah, it was all right. It was all right. We want to come back because Trump renew my visa because Trump's new policy, make America great again. So he kicked my wife out first and he kicked me out. And then we came back to England and then because we've been out of the country for three years, no credit history, none this. I couldn't get a car. I couldn't get a phone. I couldn't get a loan.   Massively. Massively. Like I said before, you know, 23 years, half an hour to get kicked out.  That's hard. How hard is it as well that losing your brothers, like being on tour, 60 knees and only six come back? How hard is that when you lose men? I'd imagine, is that the more tough, is that the toughest thing over the job? Yeah. Yeah.  You're training for six months doing low level training.  I said, no, wait, I'll do that. You wait here.   And that's the hardest stuff to deal with. It is because you think, why did I, why didn't I go? Why didn't I go? You know what I mean? Why did I put him there? Why did I put that guy there? Why didn't I go there? You want to be there all the time. You want to be in the front of it because you don't want your men to get hurt.  So you're willing to die for your troops any day, any time? Sounds a bit cliche, doesn't it? But yeah, I suppose. And you get annoyed at that because you're doing a job, but yet, when you lose troops, you feel as if you're to blame. That's a big burden to keep on your, your heart, but is it not? Big. I wear it. I wear it. So see, how many jobs did you do? Do you count? No. No? No. Like, fucking, job, man. That's tough what you've done and what you've went through and everything that you've done that. I suppose from, either from being special forces, I think a sniper is one of the, as well as being a tough job because they get used and abused all the time.  Is that what you feel now? Yeah. Yeah, he did, yeah. Not at the time though?  You're there, you've got to do it. It makes time go quicker as well. Yeah. You know, because you just want the tour to finish.  When did, how far were you doing your, your job when you made your messes? Um, my second tour of the lack when I met her, just came back from my first tour and I met her in Bedford and, I get upset. She's, yeah, she's, um, not normal. She's something else. She's beyond, she goes beyond a remit of a wife, beyond it, to help me. Kindest woman in the world. Do you feel as if that she, she didn't realise what she was getting into being with somebody who was in the British army? That's true, yeah.  As a lower rank to a senior rank, you know, you do get proud to be a soldier and that's, people don't see that. People don't see that. How long are you away for your wife and stuff at a team? Nine months to six months, all depends on the tour. Yeah, it's a long time, especially for somebody to wait for you as well and somebody to have your back like that shows that we spoke earlier and you say it's like a gift from God, basically, like, do you think you would still be here, Craig, if you never had your misses? No. No, I I think about suicide all the time, all the time. I wake up in the morning thinking about it and I think the reason, there's a few reasons why I've never gone through with it, one, because of my wife, second, because of my dog and thirdly, somebody's got to find me and if somebody finds me, I've infected them with my misery even when I'm gone, somebody else is suffering because they need to find me. Yeah, it's a heavy stuff like that, Craig, man. Yeah. Do you not sleep well? Drugs, all to do with drugs.  I sleep in separate beds because I have really bad night terrors. I end up hitting her or pushing her out of the bed or kicking her. So, she's best off sleeping on her own, but it's not, we still love each other as much at that time, you know, still have our times together. That's a strong woman, but to be accepting all that, it just shows you the true love there, that she's accepted who you are, what you've done and what you're trying to achieve, but let's say a lad by one of you will change lives, this interview will change lives, let the strength to be still here, to carry on, that shows you you kind of carry, you're clearly a fighter, which is inspirational, like nobody realises the depths of what it's like to be in the British Army or any army, whatever it is, like it's not just your own sacrifices mentally, but it's the other people around you who are also sacrificing, like losing brothers, even people losing relationships, losing their life, like it's mad to what actually goes on and you probably not even touch the surface of what you've actually went through, but so seeing you're trying to get asleep and stuff, you said you'd need to listen to music as well. Yeah, I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy, but I have a voice in my head that says I'm vile and it's not my own voice, it's somebody else on my right side, it's constantly there all the time. Now I got blown up on tour, I got shot in the helmet or on the right side, so I don't know if that's something to do with it or anything, I don't know, but this voice, all it says is that I'm vile, that's all it says, you're vile, you're vile, you're vile, and then the medication I'm on dulls it down, but it's still there, you know, and Sundays you end up believing it and you become depressed, you become down.  When did you feel as if you started losing who you were, was it after you started doing your missions and killing people, or was it when I got blown out? Do you remember the ice wall I mentioned? Yeah. That's when it shattered, that shattered me. When was that? Believe it or not, it was my last Afghan tour, and it was probably five weeks into the tour, I hit a 30 kilo anti-tank mine in my vehicle, I broke both my arms, gave me a brain injury, I'd get migraines and all that, my hips are knackered. Yeah. And this is the strength of the army, they had me in cast for six weeks, I couldn't even wipe me own arse, I had to rely on Tanya to do everything, and I was out for six weeks. They took the cast off, you know, you feel a bit free with it, and then they made me do 10 press-ups and they sent me back out to make sure my arms were strong enough. Sent you back out? To work? Yeah. And I was doing more missions, I didn't feel right in my head, didn't feel right. So when the thing started, you'd become a different person from the kid that you were 10, 20 years ago? Yeah, I was more quiet, angry, never rang Tanya, never spoke to her, never spoke to her. Why?  The ball started rolling and I was doing exercises after the tour, you go and exercise after, and you do low level training.  Is that because you've had so much conflict for years that you were just so used to it? Does part of you so conditioned to that that you actually miss it, Greg? I miss it to this day now, it's been eight years. If somebody phoned you around and says, look, we've got a job for you. I doubt, I doubt. If China kicked off now and they wanted people under 50 to rejoin, I'm fucking, I'm at the front of the queue. I doubt.  Adrenaline, is it freedom? What is it you're battling? What is that feeling then? Euphoria, what is it? It's knowing what I'm doing. Yeah, it feels as if you've got a purpose. Yeah. It's like when you leave I work in a job now, I won't tell what it is, but I work in a job now I'm happy in that job and they treat me well at the job you know, and they're aware of my ailments and they give me extra time to rest and stuff like that.  If I didn't have that, that specific job can you imagine me working in Tesco or Sainsbury's just going down there and saying, what did you do? I was a sniper. 16 years. I think you have a qualified for stacking shells. Why am I? You know, and fair enough, I spoke to a gentleman in America last week and he said that majority of Special Forces guys have trouble finding employment in America Delta Force Navy Seals because they saw their dental in their life and they've got nothing on their CV. I've got nothing on my CV, I was a sniper. I was in the household cavalry for so many years I'm a sniper. That's it. Big blank space to where I am now. Protecting people saving lives and what you've done, man, is second to none. It's admirable. What was that word? Admiral. Admiral. But what you've achieved, I'm blown away by your story about what you've actually went through. I know wars and conflicts, but if the world was a great place there wouldn't be any, but there is. Somebody needs to protect people and you were that guy at the forefront to do that. It's unbelievable what you've actually went through and it's scary what you actually have to battle coming out as well. How long did you serve? 23 years. And after that, it was just a case of it was half an hour and to say, it was a big argument. You get put on to, like, where wounded soldiers go and you just get away from your discharge. Why did you get discharged? PTSD, severe PTSD, adjustment disorder, brain injury, hips. I just couldn't focus anymore. More PTSD and more anything else. Did you want to stay on? Yeah, I thought. But you can only go a certain distance. There would be one point in my life where I had to leave the army. You know what I mean?  I'd done 23 because I was getting discharged at the time. So I would have been discharged at the army at some point anyway, but it's just a fact of how it went around doing it. You know. I remember watching the film American Sniper. Did you just remind me of that man? Just Carl. He was a really nice guy. You met him? Yeah, I met him in America. That film is basically based on you as well. Do you watch that film and see a lot of your... I've never watched it. Yeah, I can't really watch war films. I'm either correcting them or I just can't watch it. I find things emotional. I cry. I can't advert the horse. You know, I cry when I see the RSPC adverts on telly. When I see a comedy show and somebody's serious on it, I start crying. It's weird. You just can't control your emotions. When did that start? When I got blown up. So it's all stemmed from then? Yeah. Did you think you'd just open up a doorway? That you've blocked out for so long? Yeah, I've blocked out the doors all the stuff that I've seen. This ice wall's been holding it all back and I've just been cracking on. And now I'm now I'm forced to wear a mask. I wouldn't say forced but I wear a mask because I believe this is how I think that you infect people with you misery. So you don't want to be around sad people. The only time I take it off is when I'm at home and my wife sees it and she understands. And it's good because my wife when I say I'm sad or depressed my wife went for about depression for a few months and she says to me now I know what it feels like, Greg. I know it probably not to the extent I know what it feels like to be sad, to be depressed and it's nice to understand it, you know. Because we've all had moments of depression.


Thank you for joining us this morning. We are joined by provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry in Victoria and Minister of Health Minister Adrian Dix in Vancouver. As a reminder to media on the phone line, please press star one to enter the queue. You're limited to one question and one follow-up only. I will now hand it over to Minister Dix. Please go ahead, Minister. Thank you very much, Lindsay. I'm honored to be here in Vancouver on the territories of the Squamish, the Musqueam and the Slava Tooth First Nations. Dr. Henry, of course, in Victoria. On the territories of the Laquungen speaking people, the Songhees and the Esquimalt First Nations were both honored to be here on their lands. Today we're providing an update on COVID-19 and answering your questions. I want to give you a sense of the coming week that on December 27th and December 28th, we will be providing in the afternoon written daily numbers on vaccinations, case counts and preliminary case numbers. Regular reporting will be back on Wednesday, December 29th along with the media availability in the afternoon on December 29th. So we're going to continue to provide our preliminary case counts and those will be confirmed in the numbers provided on Wednesday, December 29th. And with that, it's my honor to introduce Dr. Bonnie Henry. Thank you very much and good morning. As many people are beginning their holiday celebrations, it felt it important to update what we know right now about what is happening with Omicron and how it is spreading in British Columbia. And to provide some guidance on what to do if you are developing symptoms or have developed symptoms of COVID-19 and of course to talk about when one needs to get tested. What we are seeing across this country and across the globe is that Omicron is different. It is spreading in a way that is very different from previous variants. In a sense, we're in a different game, a different pandemic now. Some parts of it we know more about. We're putting that puzzle together globally. We know more about the infectiousness of Omicron right now and it is more highly infectious than any of the other strains of this virus that we've seen. We know more about breakthrough infections and about reinfections. And there's data that's showing up from around the world that tells us that we can get more breakthrough infections in people who have been fully vaccinated. But they tend to be less severe. Those are things that we're still watching. We also know that people who have had previous infections are much more likely to get reinfected with Omicron. So those are important things to remember. We still do not have a full picture about how severe Omicron can be across the board. And that is something that we need to continue to monitor and watch. And that's why we're talking today about the things that we need to do until we understand that in the coming weeks. Earlier this week, I mentioned that all of us would likely be exposed to this virus, to Omicron, knowing the way it was spreading in our communities. But this does not mean that all of us will get sick or will get severely sick. It's an entirely new game, as I said. What we are seeing is that Omicron is more likely to attach to the upper airways, to those ACE2 receptors in our upper airways. Which means it can spread with very small amounts of the virus. It replicates quickly. And it means that those smaller particles or aerosols are much more important. And it can spread more easily. Especially during activities like singing or talking closely to each other indoors where ventilation is poor or breathing hard. So people are getting infected with a much smaller amount of the virus and more quickly. And they're passing it on to others. And with this Omicron variant, what we're seeing is these pieces of the puzzle that are coming together. Is that the incubation period or the time between exposure and getting sick yourself and being able to pass it on to the others and to someone else is very small. What we were usually seeing in five to seven days on average is now down to around two to three days. So you can pass it on to others even before you realize that you're positive for the virus. We also know that Omicron is spreading faster in people who are not yet vaccinated. We know that because we see that transmission being explosive in some of those settings. And it's because our immune system has not developed those defences that are very specific for this virus, for the spike protein that vaccination gives. This means that if you are at all sick right now, if you think it isn't COVID, even if you think it's just a mild cold or flu, you need to take precautions because they have not been vaccinated or because they're older or younger. Even now, especially if anyone in your family is at risk, you need to stay away, even if you don't think it is COVID. The speed of transmission at this point also means that our case and contact tracing cannot keep up. We can keep up with people who have a test and we'll talk a bit more about testing, but we cannot find contacts and people know this within two to three days. It often takes a little bit longer. So it's really important right now that all of us pay attention to this. This virus is spreading, it's spreading in all of us. And we need to take those actions and we can take those actions, which keep ourselves, which make a difference to control the impact the virus is going to have both on ourselves and on those we are closest to that we are more likely to spread it to. This means we need your help to make sure that you are taking the actions you need to do and notifying people around you if you are positive for COVID-19. In addition, our testing centres are at their maximum capacity. We did over 20,000 PCR tests yesterday and that's the maximum that we can do. So I want to be very clear, do not go to a testing centre unless you have symptoms. And then we need to preserve the more accurate PCR testing for those who really need it. The testing centres are not for pre-travel screening, nor do they give you a green light to spend time with others. We've talked about this before, but this is more important than ever. A negative test is not a green light.  So this is important right now more than anything. The testing centres are to confirm that someone with symptoms of the virus has COVID-19 or to rule it out for those key workers like healthcare workers and emergency responders who need to be able to go into work. I encourage everybody to go to the BC CDC symptom checker online. It's a good tool to use to help you understand if you need to get a test. Right now, our PCR tests need to be used for those who are at highest risk. So that means people who are older, over age 65, people who have underlying illnesses and people with more severe symptoms where this makes a difference in how they get treated and access to treatment. So that is the first priority at our treatment centres and as well to test people with symptoms who are hospital workers, emergency responders and others who need this. Rapid testing is also now being used to supplement our PCR testing at many of our testing centres. It's also being used in a number of different settings like remote communities to really determine if COVID has made it to those communities. Rapid testing will be used again for people with symptoms to help you understand what you need to do. It will be mostly targeted to people who are younger with milder symptoms without risk factors for more severe disease. Given the rate of transmission that we are seeing, if you have any symptoms of COVID-19, Omicron is different now. If you have any symptoms, you must assume you have COVID and take measures to avoid passing it on. If you are younger and vaccinated and no other risk factors, you don't necessarily need a test. You just need to take these actions now. If you are fully vaccinated and have mild symptoms, you should assume you are positive, stay home and stay away from others for 7 days. If you are not fully vaccinated and don't have other underlying risk factors, you must isolate for 10 days. And this is because we know that vaccination helps us manage these infections more rapidly, so we shed less fires for a shorter period of time. You should as well notify your close contacts, and that's people that you spent time with, particularly indoors in close proximity without wearing masks, and they need to monitor for 14 days to check for symptoms themselves. Anybody who is unvaccinated, who you've had close contact with, if you have symptoms and positive for COVID, needs to stay away from others and monitor and self-isolate for 10 days. This means regrettably that we will need to adjust our holiday plans if we have symptoms right now that could be related to Omicron. You need to isolate yourself from those people in your household, particularly anybody who is at risk and anyone coming to your home. We all need to gather together now and continue to support each other, to support people who have symptoms who are doing their part to keep us all safe.  Your close contacts and anyone you live with should limit their interactions with others and closely monitor themselves for symptoms as well. Anyone with someone in their social network who recently tested positive or who is waiting test results or is at home with symptoms, you should consider yourself a contact of Omicron. Don't go to group gatherings and particularly don't go to gatherings where you'll be with people who have risk factors for severe illness. If you do have symptoms and they worsen, or you're having difficulty breathing, chest pain, can't drink anything, and your self-care is not helping you manage your illness, then do not be afraid to call 911 if you need it. To call 811 to get advice or talk to your healthcare provider. While I caution about the need to get tested, if you are seriously unwell, please do not hesitate to seek care immediately. One by one, this piece of the puzzle that we didn't know yet, and the one piece of the puzzle that we are still working on, is how severe illness Omicron will cause. We're watching very carefully hospitalizations and ICU cases in this province and around the world, and we've had some positive results on that side, some positive tests coming in, positive studies coming in the last few days. Particularly, some hope that we see from what's come out of Scotland, from the UK and from South Africa, which seems to indicate that in many cases, this is a milder illness in most people. So that is hopeful news. We don't yet know that for our context here in BC, but I also am very hopeful. We have a lot of people who have stepped up and gotten the protection that vaccination offers, that have gotten their booster doses, and we have been good at taking these measures to protect each other. We will continue to be watching these measures, the data that's coming from around the world very closely. There's still some caveats that we don't yet know. Particularly, we think about the study in Scotland, which showed a much reduced risk of hospitalization. That was still in people who are younger, and we know that younger people have a lower risk of hospitalization anyway. As we're starting as this Omicron is progressing and moving into older populations, we need to know if that still holds. So there's still a period of time of uncertainty right now. So this is a different virus, this Omicron, that is now causing what we are seeing across our province. And once again, a different holiday season for all of us. For many, including me, physical activity, going to a gym or fitness center is a key part of mental and physical well-being. And I know that this has impacted people that we've required these to be closed on a temporary basis right now. This is a very high risk period. We see this as transmitting rapidly, and particularly in young people, and when we're doing those types of activities where aerosols can be generated. I know that all those in the gym community have been doing their part. And gyms and fitness centers have had really good protocols in place, and people have stepped up and gotten vaccinated to protect each other. And this part, I now need you to continue to have that contact and connect with those people in your community. Do things online. Go outside and meet for a walk or a run if you can.  I would like to assure you as well that the uncertainty around this virus remains high, but we will be back to doing those activities in gyms and fitness centers in all of those other places as soon as we know more. And while we need to keep our groups small right now, limit our in-person connections, let's ensure we are maintaining those important social connections in a safe way. Like we did last year, like we have learned to do, it's important to connect with each other, especially this time of year, and I encourage you to resurrect all those things that we were doing before. Now's the time to bring them back out again, whether that's reaching out to people who may be alone, sending them a text or note or calling somebody, deliver a meal or baking to someone who may be isolating. Continuing to connect virtually is so important. We know it's not the same, but it will get us through this next few weeks. We need to give each other a booster shot of communal kindness right now. It is incredibly important and safe connection. And I ask you, let's continue to do this together. We will get through this wave, this new challenge that we are faced with, and we'll get it through together by being kind, being calm and being safe. Thank you. I will now hand it over to Minister Dix. Thank you very much. So I want to start by expressing my gratitude, I think everyone's gratitude to people working in healthcare around BC, who are doing exceptional things right now to support people in very challenging, very difficult times, those that have been described by Dr. Henry just now. Dr. Henry mentioned that yesterday we processed 20,133 PCR tests for COVID-19 20,133 with a 24-hour turnaround and what that reflects is exceptional work by workers at our test sites but also in our labs who at this challenging time on December 22nd and 23rd did that extraordinary work but that reflects the work done in our hospitals and in the community and long-term care by our ambulance paramedics by all those at our immunization sites who are going to say the least above and beyond and I want to wish all of them expressed to all of them my gratitude, my personal gratitude and I think those of everyone in BC for their efforts Omicron as Dr. Henry has said takes every opportunity we give it to spread and it's up to us, all of us in all of our different ways to slow that spread. It's up to us to keep our emergency rooms and hospitals from being overwhelmed we need to adhere to public health orders we need to follow the latest public health guidance we need to use our COVID sense and right now we need to make sure that COVID test sites are there for the people who need them most if we're symptom free we do not go to get a test if we have mild symptoms we act like we've been exposed and stay home because that helps stop the spread if we have severe symptoms the system are here for us and we go and get medical help regarding booster shots just a brief update our rollout continues to be robust 807,094 third doses or booster doses have been provided in BC in addition 120,844 children from ages 5 to 11 have received their first doses of the Pfizer vaccine designed specifically for them yesterday for example there were 38,500 total bookings 34,000 of these were booster or third doses our original plan projected 32,000 doses this time of the year to be administered weekly then it was raised to 99,500 when we opened additional clinics and we have done 106,000 from Monday December 20 to last night we still have unbooked capacity when they received their invitation as of yesterday spots that are not booked include this week 7,000 and next week 25,000 of which 14,000 are in the interior in the first three weeks of January 203,000 are not yet booked with more appointments going up every day currently we have a total of 656 locations for vaccination around the province through to January 2nd including health authority clinics and pharmacies clinics offering vaccinations to children 5 to 11 around the province across these two holiday weeks so we can add to 120,844 children who are vaccinated against COVID-19 received their first dose vaccination from ages 5 to 11 a total of 147,371 vaccinations are projected for December 22nd to January 2nd and this does not include our drop in sites we are making progress with the number of patients who have received their third dose 75% of those 70 and older who are eligible have received a third dose or booster dose and that includes many other groups and this is specific to our effort to target booster doses at those who are at the greatest risk so our clinically vulnerable in categories 1 and 2 have been 135,253 of those groups have been vaccinated as of December 10th we started sending on our six month after second dose system to the third group of clinically vulnerable people and of course tens of thousands of health care workers more than 30,000 people who are double AstraZeneca or CovaShield in their first and second doses well over 50,000 indigenous people and so on our program continues to be targeted at those who are at the greatest risk and this is one of the ways we can prevent and help prevent the most severe outcomes from COVID-19 and the Omicron variant of concern yesterday those 63 to 64 who are eligible will receive their invitations to make an appointment next Tuesday those 61 and 62 next Thursday those 60 and that will continue including vulnerable categories and others in short this is an extraordinary effort by health care across British Columbia there will be opportunities to book and when you receive an invitation I strongly encourage you to book because if you are receiving an invitation right now it is because you are in a category of people either due to age or other circumstances where you should get your third dose and get it now and I encourage everyone to book Omicron and we can preserve our health care system in these challenging times we are taking the steps to do it and we all need to take those steps right now we must do both slow Omicron and protect our health care system no matter how we celebrate the holidays the greatest gift we can give this year is to protect the people we love and care about by slowing the spread of Omicron doing that and sharing that message with friends and families will make all the difference in the days ahead and with that we are happy to take your questions Reminders to media on the phone line please press star 1 to enter the queue you are limited to one question and one follow up First question this morning is from Lisa Cordesco Vancouver Sun Thank you I would like to get your reaction to the information put out by the BC COVID modeling group it is predicting a tidal wave of Omicron by the end of the first week in January by a hospitalization rate that will exceed BC's capacity what do you make of those conclusions I think modeling has been helpful for us from the very beginning but I go back to what I said from the very beginning models are dependent on the inputs that go into them and there is still much that we don't yet know about Omicron in particular about how it is spreading and about severity of illness so by necessity all models are wrong some of them are really useful and this modeling group has been part of our team we have others that we look at as well and being able to look at all of the different models gives us a sense of what potentially could happen but I think what we need to focus on is that we can do things to control this it is not a prediction of what is going to happen in the future it is a set of parameters that could happen and what we are seeing is the actions that we take can make a difference in what the outcome is going to be so we still do not yet know about severity of illness in our context here in BC but we do know that the things that we can do right now can slow this down and can help prevent that impact on our healthcare system and what we do right now Lisa do you have a follow up I wanted to ask about the vaccination and the booster program why have you not used medical students or even trained people to set needles instead of redeploying healthcare workers from hospitals to do it we actually have seven months ago I actually signed an order and it is up there on our website that shows all the different groups of people so we have medical students, nursing students physio and OT students all health professional students who have been trained specifically on vaccinations who are working in our clinics we have paramedics, firefighters pharmacists, pharmacy technicians we have expanded it dramatically to a whole class dentists chiropractors many many people including retired and recent retired nurses and physicians and other healthcare providers so we have expanded that dramatically some time ago and we are pulling people back in to support the latest booster efforts too Next question is from Christopher Folds, Camloops this week Good morning you touched on the gym closures and part of the health disorder recently was the gyms are closed and sports tournaments are cancelled the provincial championships and camloops were initially cancelled but I understand there's been an exception made for them and they will go ahead under certain protocols we have a group of business gym owners and camloops who remain open and they cite as you mentioned the need for the mental health help the gyms offer and they are staying open is there anything to be done like you did with the sports tournaments to allow gyms to stay open through this period so gyms must close during this period there are things that we can do and my gym does it very very well to connect people to be able to support us having that physical activity remotely right now what we are seeing is that this is passing so quickly in those indoor environments even when we have lots of space and when we have been doing everything right and I want to say that I have met with some of the representatives in the fitness and gym industry yesterday and they have been leading in making sure that we can do things as safely as possible right now we are in a place of real uncertainty with a lot of transmission in younger people in the demographic that really is connected to their gyms so they must right now stop that in terms of the same bonds bill that I understand we are looking at it really is about trying to have the higher level competitive sports being able to do things in a certain way so there is no spectators, there is a whole variety of things that are involved in that and I will say that the ultimate decision has not yet been made on whether that will continue or will go ahead it much depends on what happens in the next week yes thank you part of the gym owners sort of I guess their frustration and I have heard it from other people is what seems to be to the layman like myself and others the kind of inconsistency in the orders the real theater is a prime example they could not operate as a movie theater but they could as a sports pub the vaccine card mandate the customers must be vaccinated the employees don't have to be and then on that gym note their gym area is closed obviously but the sauna, the hot tub and the much closer, much smaller and closed pool area remains open so is there room for a better explanation for the rationale behind this for the layman you are talking about several different things that have different impacts and yes it is very much trying to find the balance of the highest risk activities and yes movie theaters were at a higher risk we have now tried to address those so we know that seated events when you are not exerting and right now one of the reasons why I have been focusing on those areas that are indoor where we are exerting so gyms being a classic example is that we are seeing a lot of transmission now through the very small droplets and aerosols and the measures that we had in place that we are working for delta for the other variants that we have seen are just not enough at the moment it is spreading very rapidly even amongst people and because of that shorter incubation period it is before people can notify that next generation of spread in terms of the BC vaccine card program and I have said this many times it is my responsibility to put in place the public health measures for people who are attending those places it does not mean in any sense that workers in those places have to be vaccinated it is their workplace that makes sure that employees live up to the standard that is needed in that workplace and if there is transmission in those places they will be shut down so we have different measures in place for workers and of course people who work in the hospitality industry for example cannot go to stay in the restaurant or go to visit a movie theater or other place unless they are vaccinated and I know that across the board most of the restaurants for example staff are vaccinated because they recognize the importance of protecting themselves in their workplace Next question is from David Mulco CTV Dr. Henry David Mulco at CTV I want to talk a little bit about testing and testing strategy I appreciate the clear clarification around that folks who have been in these lineups this week as you can imagine organized chaos perhaps that is being generous but my question for you is how is it that we are in this situation given we had at least a couple of weeks of lead time to prepare and what are we doing now to ramp up our testing capacity for the weeks to come I think our testing strategy has always been to use the PCR testing for those who need it where it changes your clinical management or for people who need to have an accurate negative test so they can work like healthcare workers for example and you can say that we have been planning the maximum that we actually capacity that we have in terms of machines in terms of people in this province is about 20,000 PCR tests a day that is how we have planned you can't create people to work in a lab out of nowhere we need people to focus on and we have been saying this from the very beginning testing is for people who have symptoms and we need to really focus on that and part of our rapid rapid testing strategy has been to supplement that and now we are using that particularly in our testing centers for people who are at lower risk of having more severe illness and so our rapid testing is able to support and be able to determine who has COVID and not so it is a challenge but the challenges we are facing across the country and around the world this is spreading very rapidly very quickly and we ramped up to the maximum capacity that we have here right now in this province follow up David one of the things I also want to ask you about I think I will leave Jim's alone because that has come up a few times and you have answered that pretty clearly but just talking a little bit about the inconsistency in terms of closures and capacity controls I personally have been in different retail shops malls spots where there are no capacity controls where there is no distancing where people are sort of on top of each other and I don't want to be a Grinch because it is Christmas Eve but help people understand Jim's are closed because people are exerting but why not bring in capacity controls for malls for retail shops 25% if that is a risk as well and we are seeing people gather in those locations as well Boxing Day coming up and so on your thoughts and you will know that we put in orders around what is happening in Boxing Day and other sales and we have been working with the retail associations it is a qualitatively different situation and this is really important this is where we have put in the mask mandate in all of those settings retail settings are doing a very good job at capacity limits and we know people were pushing that we have become a little bit complacent as we are making our way through what was our last wave in Delta we need to step that up again now and that means all of us doing our bit thinking differently again going back to recognizing that Omicron is different it is spreading faster it is spreading much more quickly giving people space we need for retailers to limit people limit those capacities give people the distance in the space but we also know that those transactional settings where you are moving past somebody where you may be standing a few feet away everybody with your mask on with the increasing ventilation those are less risky environments it really is the workers in those environments and that is why once again we need to go back to using our COVID sense as the minister would say so yes everybody now make sure you wear your mask if you are somebody who cannot wear a mask then you can take curbside pickup do online there are other ways that you can get what you need without going into those indoor environments and everybody I am feeling to you again now we need to take a step back and recognize we are dealing with something that is different that is moving through all of us so be respectful wear your mask keep your distance and be patient with each other it is going to be a challenging few weeks until we actually understand how this virus is going this strain of the virus how Omicron is going to move through our communities and we need to do that together oh hi there thanks for taking my question regarding the concerns of people going to get tested when they don't need to be tested and basically using up these PCR tests are any changes being made to procedures at the testing stations in terms of who can get tested I had a caller on the radio this week telling me that he was in line for three hours in Coquitlam when the son was taken out of line he was 40 years old he was told that only people over age 65 that everyone else was going to get rapid tests so again just given the concerns are procedures changing at the testing stations absolutely and they have as we have understood more about transmission and risk so yes there is triage happening at the testing stations particularly in Vancouver in the Fraser Health regions where we had long lineups and here on the island so we are using the rapid antigen test to supplement PCR testing depending on the situation people will be triaged and if you are younger and don't have underlying risk factors and particularly if you are vaccinated then rapid testing may be the most efficient way for you to get what you need and for people who may have underlying risk factors for more severe illness and that usually is people who are older or younger especially younger children then you will be prioritized for getting the PCR tests if you have a follow up Keith Yes more about the psychology of what is going on right now with so many people double dose is it harder to get through to those people to express the urgency of the situation many people probably think they are bullet proof right now with double doses and obviously they are not what can be done to get through to them You know I just think and we have been trying to say this as we have learned more in this last week that the vaccine has changed with Omicron we are in a different pandemic again and there is some positive things about it I think the fact that we have so many people who have got their vaccines means that hopefully we are going to get through this without having a lot of severe illness and so far we are seeing that it is a little bit hard to tell because it is mostly younger people and younger people who have stepped up with this positive thing we are seeing about this but we need to change our behaviors and we can control how this virus is going to affect us by doing those things that we know worked way back then in March of 2020 before we had vaccines so on top of vaccines we now have other measures that can help too so we need to go back to those other measures and we need to really recognize that this is spreading really quickly because of the illness in younger people who are vaccinated and that is great but we do need to change our thinking it is not the things that we were concerned about that we could do with Delta are not necessarily working anymore so we have to be that much more careful right now and I talk about we are learning that it is binding more to the upper airways which means we can get a lot of virus that can spread very quickly in other environments in very small droplets in the aerosols so it is thinking differently to get us through this period of time and the one big question that we don't have yet fully understand yet is how severe this is going to get what is the impact going to be on our hospitals so the timing is the worst I know that I think we are all feeling that but this is going to be a Christmas where we have control we can do things by advising again and supporting each other to stay away if we are feeling sick at all and we will get through this by doing that and I am sure the minister will have some comments on this too Go ahead Minister Dix Just to say that things have clearly as described today we have been seeing the numbers here and everywhere else in the last week 9,500 cases announced in Ontario today have changed significantly we have had an average test positivity of about 2% in the period leading into Omicron and that obviously people were adjusting to those circumstances at that time we have now seen those levels go up 8, 9 times in the course of a week and a half and that requires us to change our behaviour I want to note that for example yesterday tests were based on 20,133 so expansive testing and a high test positivity as a result of that essentially 20,000 tests and 2,000 test positives is across the province a 10% test positivity which is an increase across the province about 3 times what it had been a couple of weeks before so we do have to adjust and change as a result of this and it is difficult to adjust and change because we have had to adapt a number of times but I believe that people are absolutely prepared to do that to keep themselves safe and healthier and to keep the ones they love in their communities safer and healthier and to protect the health care system and we need people to do that right now you are going to see and I didn't mention this earlier but we are going to see this afternoon we are going to be providing that bulletin for everyone at 3 o'clock today and so you will see those numbers including all of the digital numbers and the updating of the dashboard on Monday and Tuesday of course you are going to get the case numbers and then on Wednesday we will be back with a full briefing on all of the numbers so you will be able to see that but what I encourage people to do is to see what is happening here and what is happening everywhere and to change our actions accordingly and to reduce in particular what we are going to do right now and I strongly encourage people to do that Next question is from Graham Wood Glacier Media Doctor Henry is COVID is this Omicron variant airborne? I think when we look at COVID all of the SARS-CoV-2 which in various different forms it has been transmitted through the air from the very beginning but the relative importance of the different size of droplets depends on the infectiousness of the different strains so it becomes much more important to have protection against those aerosols those smaller droplets and really it is a combination of physics so if a smaller droplet an aerosol has less virus in it but if that virus is more infectious you can get infected with the smaller droplets when we initially saw early on you needed a larger dose of the virus and so it was much more important to look at protecting yourself from the larger droplets but it can spread from all of them and that is what is so important right now so in terms of the definitions that we use in the healthcare setting for airborne transmission it really talks about viruses that can be suspended in the air and travel long distances and we are not seeing that behaviour the behaviour that we see with measles or chicken pox for example we are not seeing that behaviour and how this virus is transmitted but what we are seeing is that those aerosols become more important with the higher transmission variants like Omicron so that is why it is so important to stay out of those indoor settings where we are having close conversations with people without wearing masks making sure we have an appropriate mask for the situation that we are in so if we are going to be indoors with a group of people for a period of time then upgrading to a medical mask or an N95 if you can handle how the N95 fits or a medical mask with a good quality cloth mask that helps mold it better to your face so all of these things are wrapped up in how this virus is transmitted but it becomes much more important with the strains like Omicron for sure Graham, do you have a follow up? Yeah Are you still comfortable with the Kanaat game proceeding on Monday? Obviously we are looking at these on a day to day basis. We know that the increased space in some of those larger environments we have now of course increased capacity the importance of mask wearing, continuous mask wearing which we are not always being adhered to so we are assessing these on a day by day basis Next question is from Rob Monroe info news Thank you Dr Henry I am just a bit confused about the numbers we had 2046 new cases yesterday but the data said there was 975 Omicron which is the total we have so far so how long is it going to be before the Omicron is the dominant strain and why are so many people must be getting Delta? Yeah so the Omicron numbers are those that are confirmed by whole genome sequencing and so there is a delay so we are seeing that the percentage of cases on a day by day basis that are Omicron compared to Delta is rapidly rising and it is over 50% now we expect it to be the dominant strain this week so that is what we are seeing so people who get a positive PCR test they are notified right away that is what we report on a daily basis so the 2000 people were people who reported yesterday it takes a delay of several days to get the whole genome sequencing so what we get is a trajectory of what we are expecting so most of the cases the 2000 cases from yesterday will be Omicron Follow-up Rob? Yes we are trying to get some clarification on the rules for in-home visiting and you said 10 individuals or one of its larger but could we therefore have 10 people from 10 different households come and visit us tomorrow for Christmas dinner? You could but that is not our recommendation we want people to keep it small but there are some groups of people who are close connections they may be sisters and brothers and a family who come from different households so a maximum is 10 but you know what right now people need to think if I have any symptoms at all even if I think it is just the sniffles or cold then I don't want to be around my new nephew or niece or don't want to be around my grandparents or people who might have more severe illness if they get sick with this if you have any symptoms stay away from the gatherings right now keep those groups small if there is anybody who has compromising conditions people going through cancer treatment find ways to connect with your family and your close friends in ways that aren't going to put you at risk this virus is spreading very rapidly the 2,000 positive cases yesterday are just the ones that we tested we know that there are many more people that didn't go for a test there are many more people who are just doing the right things and staying at home we all need to rethink how we spend the next few days and if you have any concerns at all put it off find a way to connect as I will be doing with my family who don't live in this province find ways to connect that are meaningful and that will get you through this period of time and I know that means for some people disappointingly you are going to have to reassess your plans do the home delivery of turkey we have seen a lot of that that's how we get through this together we have time for one more question this morning John Hernandez, CBC good morning could we get answers for both in English and French for these what advice do you have for employers in non-essential sectors who currently require proof of a negative COVID test for employees with any cold or flu-like symptoms to return to work access to testing also earlier in the pandemic people who tested positive were prioritized to be notified those who were waiting longer to hear were negative is that happening now do you usually Dr. Henry do you want to go first and then I will follow up just to say that all the testing now is automatic for most people some people get a call but most people get a text or a message or positive so the testing notification is going out right away to people so that has changed from very early on in this in terms of employers right now there is programs in certain businesses particularly some of the essential businesses where there is sequential testing and that obviously can continue and we need to make sure that for those people who have symptoms that they can get the accurate tests and I talked about emergency services healthcare workers and others for those settings where right now they are not essential services or there is a pause over this period of time then the best advice right now is if you don't need to go into work if you can work from home you can do that from home then that is the recommendation right now go ahead Minister Dix I think that what Dr Henry just said is that the notifications are pretty automatic so for people they receive information pretty quickly after the positive test is confirmed by the CDC so this process has been going on for many months since the beginning of the year and so we see this everywhere but our recommendation is that if you are not essential and have a little work at a distance it is important to do it now so I think what Dr Henry just said is important for everyone of course we will have a lot of discussion here the recommendation number of people January 3rd, January 4th but for the moment we need more in all the elements so that it is in our personal context at work can you expand a bit on what you said about people who have already had COVID getting re-infected with Omicron how often is that happening in BC and again both in English and French I can start with the sorry I have forgotten already what the first question was the test positivity in Vancouver Coast on the Fraser it is still just under about 10% from yesterday's numbers but it has increased from around 2% which had been that for quite some time in those areas so yes 10% in the large urban areas with large numbers of people is very high numbers of people and that is only the people who were tested so that is one of the reasons why we are putting out this message today about if you have any symptoms at all reassess your plans right now don't go to gatherings for yourself sorry positivity we are moving to 10% as a 7-day rolling average in the Metro Vancouver Health Authority so when you see a climb in cases and test positivity and you are doing a 7-day rolling average you are dropping off the first day and you are adding the next day and obviously the trajectory yesterday will give you the exact numbers but it was 1621 cases or sorry 1621 cases in the two Metro Vancouver Health Authority so that is a test positivity a 1-day test positivity well over 10% and a 7-day rolling average it is approached 10% and so that is significant and if you look at across the province because the Vancouver Coastal Health has moved to having the highest test positivity that in the last number of days you will see that reflected slightly differently but it is going up everywhere I should say that people in the north and our health care workers in the north have been dealing with 15-25% 15-20% test positivity for months and doing an exceptional work under those circumstances but we saw the effect of that the less transmissive Delta variant although the Delta variant has had a very severe effect especially on unvaccinated people and indeed continues to so those are the rates and will be happy to give you the precise numbers on a daily basis but also the 7-day rolling average by health authorities which is obviously going to go up again today because it is significantly higher yesterday than it was 7 days ago I would say in French that we have had about 1600 cases in the two regions of health in the Vancouver region yesterday that is to say an average test positivity during 7 days of 10% more or less but much more yesterday of course so we have had 20,000 tests yesterday and there were 2,000 cases a little bit everywhere in the province for 1 day so what we see is that the ability to transmit this variant to the migrants is exceptional and we see it a little bit everywhere in the province so we have to take personal measures we are taking a health system to protect us to anticipate what is going to happen in our hospitals in January so we have to act now to protect people in January and I hope that everyone follows the advice of Dr Henry and public health at the moment it is absolutely essential and essential for everyone thank you very much if you want to say something more okay answer your second part of your question which is about reinfection rates so this is people who have been infected before and what we do not yet have those data from British Columbia it is one of the things that we look at from our linked data that we have and we are looking at that but as you know our rapid increase is really relatively recent here as I have talked about we have this puzzle we are putting these pieces of the puzzle together so there is some really good data from South Africa that shows that even though they had a very high rate of recent previous infection the reinfection rate was 10 times higher with the Omicron than what they saw with Delta with the Delta wave that went through there and beta prior to that and the other piece of information that came out just yesterday from Scotland and part of the study that they did looking at severity of illness and potential hospitalizations and risk of hospitalizations with Omicron compared to Delta they also were able to look at reinfections in the database that they had there in the UK in Scotland and particularly they have had this surge that has been going on a little bit longer than us so they have greater numbers of people and again it showed that and I won't have the exact numbers off the top of my head but it was less than 1% reinfection with Delta and it was 10 times higher so I believe it was 7.6% with what comes to mind somewhere around that reinfection rate with Omicron so even in the early numbers that they are seeing it is a much higher reinfection rate in people who were infected before and not vaccinated with Omicron so that is just a warning sign to us and really what it tells us is that this virus is spreading in a slightly different way it is causing infection it is causing infection faster and more severely in people who are not vaccinated and so if I can put a plea out your risk is going up right now because the virus is spreading even in people who are vaccinated although at a lower rate but still because there is more virus circulating people who are not vaccinated are at greater risk right now so please walk into a vaccine clinic get that vaccine get that your first shot that is going to start getting your immune system working on getting specific protection for this virus and you will need that so that is an important message to everybody right now and I hope you all have a very safe and happy Christmas that is all the time we have for you


This study examined the use of cow dung ash, CDA, as a partial replacement for ordinary Portland cement, OPC, in mortar mixtures. The study found that CDA could be used as a substitute for OPC at a maximum level of 10%. However, this level was not sufficient to produce a mortar with similar physical and mechanical properties compared to OPC. At higher levels of CDA substitution, the mortar became less dense and had lower compressive strength. Additionally, the presence of unreacted particles and wide-stretched CSH gels were observed in the FTR analysis. This article was authored by Milook and Alba Choworku, Wibbished Zudu Tafees, the Hela Zirihan Hailamarium, and others.