11 COVID deaths over 3 days

British Columbia's health minister promised to "do better" on Monday after call centres to schedule vaccine appointments were overwhelmed on the first day of booking.

Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer, and Adrian Dix, Minister of Health, provide an update on COVID-19 in BC. #covidbc https://t.co/KS9dUvqaG5

— BC Government News (@BCGovNews) March 8, 2021

Adrian Dix said there were 1.7 million calls in less than three hours after the phone lines opened for people over 90 and Indigenous elders over 65 to book their appointments.

Dix said he believed that people who were not yet eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine were flooding the lines, but he also acknowledged that more staffing was needed.

"It's really important in order to allow those over 90 to get their appointments that we only call when our age group becomes open for calling," he told the province's COVID-19 briefing.

"It's also important that we do better. I know that people have called in and have waited a long time today."

Dix said that more resources would be added in the coming weeks, as more age groups become eligible to call to book their vaccines.

People born in 1936 or earlier can start calling for appointments on March 15 and those born in 1941 or earlier can start to schedule their immunizations March 22.

Fraser Health was the only authority to launch an online booking platform on Monday, but Dix said a web-based system would become widely available on April 12.

Some residents with elderly parents said they spent hours redialing their health authority's number and only got a busy signal or a recorded message telling them to call back later.

Julie Tapley, whose 90-year-old father lives in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, said she was frustrated that the authority had not yet established an online booking system.

"I just want to get in the queue and start the process so that (my parents) can return to their normal lives."

B.C.'s provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, said creating an online booking system is "quite a large project" and Fraser Health was the only authority with an existing platform.

Of about 80,000 people eligible to book appointments this week, roughly 26,000 have already received a shot, so a relatively small number of people should be calling, Dix said.

He said about 10,000 appointments were booked as of Monday afternoon and a "significant number" of those were scheduled through the Fraser Health online site.

Dix urged eligible residents and their families to keep calling in the coming days. There are plenty of appointments available and it is not a "first-come, first-serve" system, he said.

Although B.C.'s case numbers have been on the rise, Henry said some restrictions would be eased in the coming weeks as the weather warms and immunizations ramp up.

Outdoor gatherings, larger meeting places and layers of protection such as masks will still be recommended, she said.

"I like to think of it as slowly turning up the dial again rather than flicking a switch," she said.

She also said she hopes to see the return of sports and in-person religious ceremonies within weeks.

Officials have been developing a plan with faith leaders to enable the gradual return of in-person services, as there are important dates in many religions coming up, Henry said.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge reserved his decision on Friday on a petition filed by three Fraser Valley churches who argued that a ban on in-person services violates charter rights.

Henry reported on Monday 1,462 new COVID-19 cases and 11 deaths over three days, pushing the death toll to 1,391 in the province.

She said there was one new outbreak in a long-term care home, the Cottonwoods Care Centre in Kelowna, where a high number of residents and staff had already been vaccinated.

The flare-up serves as a reminder that while vaccines are effective and prevent severe illness and death, they don’t necessarily mean that all transmission will be stopped, she said.

There have been 144 new cases that are variants of concern, bringing the total to 394 confirmed cases. Officials still do not know how about a quarter of the cases were acquired.

Henry became emotional when quoting Chief Robert Joseph, a knowledge-keeper with the Assembly of First Nations.

"We will celebrate our lives again, dream our dreams again and watch our children regain their hope," Henry quoted him as saying, with tears in her eyes.

"That's what we can look forward to in the coming months."