As BC continues through Phase 3 of its restart plan, more people are using transit to get where they need to go. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said this week that absolutely everybody” on transit should be wearing a mask.
Henry made the comments during a press conference this week, where she also spoke to the logistics of trying to enforce such a guideline.
“I absolutely think everybody on transit should be wearing a mask – everybody who can,” she added.
At the end of the day, “if you are taking transit right now, you should be wearing a face covering unless there’s a very valid reason you can’t.”
Henry said she also recognizes that enforcement of a guideline like this is a challenge and that we’ve seen some unfortunate events around people making it an issue.
“We know that sometimes it’s hard to tell when people can or can’t wear a mask – it may be around physical disability… but there are very few medical reasons that people can’t wear masks,” she said.
Henry stressed that masks are safe to wear, adding they don’t increase risk of people becoming hypoxic, they don’t increase the risk of keeping bacteria or viruses in the body, and they don’t exacerbate pre-existing conditions like asthma.
Still, she recognized that the very act of wearing a mask can take some getting used to. “I know that from my own experience.”
Even so, she said, “we should be using masks on transit all the time. I do and I expect others to as well.”
