Here’s the latest on the COVID-19 pandemic in Surrey, White Rock and beyond for Thursday, April 30. This will be updated as information becomes available:
• Police have had to follow up with house visits to 500 travellers for evading calls from B.C. officials checking in to make sure they are self-isolating as per provincial and federal orders.
• Mission Institution: Voices from inside Canada’s worst COVID-19 prison outbreak.
• The people who cared for a COVID-19 patient: How a single case was handled.
• Rotarians from across Delta came together Wednesday evening to give thanks to health-care workers and mark World Immunization Week.
• Vancity and United Way Greater Victoria have come together to fund Survive and Thrive, a program to help organizations chart a road to recovery post-COVID-19.
• The B.C. government is deferring collection of stumpage fees on timber harvested from Crown land for three months to help an industry already near a standstill before the COVID-19 pandemic.
• After calls from the union representing Canadian truck drivers for government officials to re-open highway rest areas amid the ongoing pandemic, the province has added 35 portable toilets along major transport routes in B.C.
• Delta Police Department Chief Neil Dubord answers questions about the department’s response to COVID-19 and how officers and staff are coping with the ongoing pandemic.
• Parliament’s budget watchdog says that it’s likely the federal deficit for the year will hit $252.1 billion as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Nunavut says it has its first case of COVID-19.
• In a rare action looking beyond the current COVID-19 crisis, White Rock council has endorsed a recommendation focusing on future restaurant business on Marine Drive – in particular the potential for weather-protected all-season patios on the waterfront.
• When teacher Jinhee Park noticed some of her students feeling down about cancelled classes and not seeing their friends at school, she sought to cheer them up with one song they’d grown to love before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
• Broken hip and COVID-19 keep B.C. couple apart for 76th anniversary.
• Doctors say they’re becoming increasingly concerned about how they will handle the swelling backlog of elective surgeries once the immediate COVID-19 threat has ebbed.
• Surrey Pretrial Centre has no confirmed COVID-19 infections among its staff and 307 inmates.
• Provincial Labour Minister Harry Bains says B.C. is in a “relatively good position” to rebound strongly when the pandemic is over, having entered it with a thriving economy and workforce.
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