Tag covid-19

A Few Thoughts on Emergency Planning

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

A conversation I find myself having fairly often is about people not using plans. It’s amazing that we invest so much time, money, and effort into building plans to never see them used, even if the opportunity presents itself. Why is this? I see four primary reasons:

1. People don’t know the plans exist. There is really no excuse for this one. I find it shameful and wasteful, especially if these people are identified as action agents within that plan. There was practically no point in even developing the plan no one knows about it and their respective roles identified within. Socialization of plans once they are developed is extremely important. Minimalist effort can be made by simply sending the plan or a link to the plan, but I consider this to be inadequate as many people will dismiss it, never get to reviewing it, or not understand what they are reading. Structured briefings are the best way to initially familiarize people with the plans and their roles. It helps to have refresher training as well as ensuring that new hires are similarly trained. This can even be done as a recorded presentation or webinar, though providing a contact for questions is important. Along with socializing, remember the importance of exercises, not only to validate plans but also to help people become more familiar with plans their respective roles by taking a scenario-drive dive into the content. Does everyone in your organization or jurisdiction who has a role in a plan know about it?

2. People don’t remember the plans exist. This one is a bit more forgivable, especially for newer plans, rarely implemented plans, or for personnel who are used to “doing things the way they’ve always been done”. Still, I find these excuses to be weak at best. People’s inability to remember the plans, even granting them the distraction of the incident itself, means that the plans haven’t been socialized and reinforced enough (see item 1 above).

3. People don’t care if the plans exist. This one has been underscored considerably over the past year related to pandemic plans, point of distribution (POD) plans, and other related plans. We’ve seen many senior leaders and elected officials be completely dismissive of established plans, choosing instead to “do it their way” in an effort to exert greater control or to ensure that their name is front and center. Since this one involves a lot of ego, particularly of senior leaders and elected officials, it can be difficult to work around. That said, this underscores the importance of ensuring that elected officials and newly appointed senior leaders are adequately briefed on the existing plans when they take office, and given confidence in the plans and the people identified to implement them, as well as the important roles of elected and appointed officials.

4. People think the plans are faulty. This option is the likely more well-intentioned version of #3, where people are intentionally not using the plan because they feel (maybe true, maybe not) the plan is inadequate and feel that “winging it” is the better option. Part of this lack of confidence may be unfamiliarity with and/or validation of the plans (see item 1 above re socialization and exercises). This could be a difference of opinion or even something intentionally obstructionist. Along with socialization and exercises, I’ll also add the value of including key people in the planning process. This gives them a voice at the table and allows their input to be heard and considered for development of the plan. While you can’t include everyone in the planning process, consider that the people you do choose to involve can serve as representatives or proxies for others, especially if they are well respected, giving less reason for others to push back.

A separate, but somewhat related topic (mostly to #4 above) is about people being often dismissive of or lacking confidence in plans by expressing the saying of “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”. This saying is credited to nineteenth century Prussian military commander Helmuth van Moltke. We see this saying tossed around quite a bit in various circles, including emergency management. While I understand and respect the intent of the phrase, I don’t think this necessarily holds true. I’ve seen great plans fail and mediocre plans be reasonably successful. Why? Circumstances dictate a lot of it. Implementation as well (this is the human factor). What we need to understand is that plans provide a starting point and hopefully some relevant guidance along the way. If a plan is so detailed and rigid, it is more likely to fail. So should our plans not be detailed? No, we should put as much detail as possible into our plans as these will help guide us in the midst of the incident, especially if certain activities are highly technical or process-oriented; but we also need to allow for flexibility. Consider a plan to be a highway. Highways have exits which take us off to different places, but they also have on-ramps to help us return. A deviation from a plan does not mean we throw the plan away, as we can always get back onto the plan, if it’s appropriate. It’s also smart to build in options, as possible, within our plans to help minimize deviations. 

How we develop plans is strongly related to step 2 of CPG-101, and that is “Understand the Situation”. Without an understanding of the situation, we can’t account for the various factors involved and may not account for the circumstances for which we must develop contingencies or options. And while this assessment is part of the planning process, as well as training, exercises, and other facets of preparedness, I feel that a wholistic assessment also has value. I’ve written a lot about the POETE preparedness elements and have begun advocating for APOETE, with the A standing for Assessment. This assessment is broad based to help guide our overall preparedness activity but is not a replacement for the element-specific assessments.

My last thought is about pandemic and POD plans. I’m curious about who has used their plans during this pandemic, and if not, why not? Of course many of the assumptions we used for pandemic planning weren’t realized in this pandemic. Does this mean our pandemic plans were faulty? Not entirely. Clearly there should have been many content areas that were still useful, and even though some of the assumptions we had didn’t apply to this pandemic, they may still hold true for future public health emergencies. We’ve also learned a lot about our response that needs to be considered for plan updates, and we need to weigh how much of the reality of political blundering we should account for in our plans. In the end, what I caution against is developing a pandemic plan that centers on the COVID-19 pandemic. Preparing for the last disaster doesn’t necessarily prepare us for the next one.

Those are some of my thoughts for the morning. As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

© 2021 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

FEMA’s First Lessons Learned From COVID-19

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

FEMA recently released the Pandemic Response to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Initial Assessment Report (January – September 2020). The report has many elements of a traditional after-action report. The authors reinforce that the report only evaluates FEMA’s response, not those of other agencies or entities. That said, emergency management, by nature is collaborative and FEMA’s interactions with other agencies and entities are cited as necessary. The report covers five primary areas of evaluation:

  1. Coordinating Structures and Policy
  2. Resources
  3. Supporting State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) Partners
  4. Preparedness and Information Analysis
  5. Organizational Resilience

Also, with similarity to a traditional after-action report, this report provides a table of key findings and recommendations as Appendix A.

Here are some of my primary observations:

Following the executive summary is a the COVID-19 Pandemic Overview, which is a well-constructed piece providing a combined narrative timeline and topical highlights, providing information and context to the pandemic and the response, as well as some of the complexities encountered. While the report does well to acknowledge the myriad disasters that SLTT partners and federal agencies responded to over 2020, I find it shameful that they very obviously ignore the societal impacts of the US political climate (related to the pandemic and otherwise) as well as events surrounding the BLM movement. I firmly believe this report should fully acknowledge these factors and could have done so without itself making a political statement. These were important, impactful, and far-reaching, certainly influencing the operating environment, public information, and other very real facets of the response. I feel that the exclusion of these factors leaves this report incomplete.

Relative to the Coordinating Structures and Policy section, FEMA reinforces many, many times that they were put into a leadership position for this disaster that was unexpected and perhaps led to some coordination problems. I feel FEMA should always be a lead or co-lead agency for the federal response for large disasters regardless of the hazard. While a pandemic is certainly a public health hazard, FEMA has practiced experience in federal coordination to major disasters, mobilization of resources and logistical support, SLTT coordination, and overall incident management. The Unified Coordination Group is a sound application in situations where other federal agencies share significant authority. The kinks should be worked out of this, with the National Response Framework updated to reflect such.

Also mentioned within this section is the creation of a White House Task Force which was intended to make executive decisions of the highest level. This is not unprecedented and should certainly be expected for other large-scale disasters in the future. I feel, however, that removing the FEMA Administrator from having a direct line of communication with the White House during ‘peace time’ has significant impact on FEMA leadership’s ability to integrate. Positioning FEMA subordinate to the Secretary of Homeland Security is akin to putting a police officer in charge of a pool and keeping the lifeguard in the breakroom. Sure, the police officer can do a lot, but there are specific skills needed which necessitate that the lifeguard has a constant presence at the pool rather than only being called in when something gets bad enough. 

FEMA makes a point about inheriting eight task forces created by HHS which then needed to be integrated into the NRCC organization. These task forces had some overlap with the existing NRCC and ESF structure, resulting in duplications of effort and coordination problems. While FEMA says they were able to overcome this over time, it is obviously something that, given the National Response Framework, should have not happened in the first place. FEMA’s recommendations associated with this matter do not once cite the National Response Framework and instead point the finger at NIMS/ICS use, fully ignoring that the foundation of preparedness is planning. Either HHS made these task forces up on the fly or had a plan in place that accounted for their creation. Either way, it’s the National Response Framework that was ignored. NIMS/ICS helps support plan implementation.

The next section on resource management demonstrates that FEMA learned a lot about some intricacies of resource management they may have not previously encountered. With the full mobilization of resources across the nation for the pandemic, along with targeted mobilizations for other disasters, the system was considerably stressed. FEMA adapted their systems and processes, and in some cases developed new methodologies to address resource management needs. One key finding identified was a need to better integrate private sector partners, which isn’t surprising. I think we often take for granted the resources and systems needed to properly coordinate with the private sector on a large scale during a disaster. One of the largest disasters within this disaster was that of failed supply chains. Granted, the need was unprecedented, but we certainly need to bolster our preparedness in this area.

To help address supply chain issues, novel solutions such as Project Airbridge and specific applications of the Defense Production Act were used. The best practices from these strategies must be memorialized in the form of a national plan for massive resource mobilizations.

SLTT support for the time period of the report was largely successful, which isn’t a surprise since it’s fundamentally what FEMA does as the main coordination point between SLTT partners and federal agencies. Significant mobilizations of direct federal support to SLTT partners took place. The pandemic has provided the best proof of concept of the FEMA Integration Teams (FIT) since their development in 2017. With established relationships with SLTT partners and knowledge of needs of the federal system, they provided support, liaised, and were key to shared situational awareness. I appreciate that one of the recommendations in this section was development of a better concept of operations to address the roles and responsibilities of FIT and IMATs.

One item not directly addressed in this section was that in emergency management we have a great culture of sharing resources and people. Sharing was pretty limited in the pandemic since everyone was impacted and everyone needed resources. This caused an even greater demand on FEMA’s resources since SLTT partners largely weren’t able to support each other as they often do during disasters.

The section on preparedness and information analysis was interesting, especially on the information analysis side. The preparedness findings weren’t really much of a surprise, including not anticipating supply chain issues or SLTT needs. What this boils down to is a lack of effective plans for nation-wide disasters. On the information side, the key findings really boil down to not only improved defining of data sets and essential elements of information relative to specific needs, audiences, functions, capabilities, and lines of effort. It appears a lot was learned about not only the information needed, but also how to best utilize that information. Analytics makes data meaningful and supports better situational awareness and common operating picture.

The last section on FEMA’s organizational resilience is a good look at some of the inner workings and needs of FEMA as an agency and how they endured the pandemic and the varied demands on the agency. FEMA has always had a great culture of most employees having a disaster job which they are prepared to move into upon notice. They learned about some of the implications associated with this disaster, such as issues with engaging such a large portion of their employees in long-term deployments, public health protection, and mental health matters.

Ultimately, despite my disagreement with a couple of recommendations and leaving out some very important factors, the report is honest and, if the corrective actions are implemented, will support a stronger FEMA in the future. I’m hopeful we see a lot of these AAR types of documents across federal agencies, state agencies, local governments, the private sector, etc. EVERYONE learned from this pandemic, and continues to learn. That said, while the efforts of individual entities hold a lot of value, there also needs to be a broader, more collective examination of ‘our’ response to this disaster. This would be a monumental first task for a National Disaster Safety Board, would it not? 

© 2021 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

The Contrarian Emergency Manager™

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Contingency Planning

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

I’m going to wrap up 2020 by discussing contingency planning, which is a practice not seen often enough. Before I get started, I should contextualize my use of the term ‘contingency plan’. My general use of the term, at least in emergency management applications, is intended to refer to a plan which may be needed to address the disruption of current event management, incident response, or recovery operations. Essentially, it’s the emergency plan to use while dealing with an emergency, in the event that something bad occurs.

When might you need a contingency plan? Contingency plans should be developed for the kind of situations that have you looking over your shoulder or asking ‘what if…’. Weather events are often good examples, such as a response taking place during some very active tornado weather. You might be responding to the impacts of an earlier tornado, or something completely unrelated, but a tornado warning is in effect, meaning that one could materialize at any time. This could also be a response taking place in a low-lying area during a flash flood warning. We sometimes build contingency plans into our standard operating guidelines or procedures (SOPs/SOGs) by having back-up teams, such as rapid intervention teams (RITs) in the fire service, which are standing by to rescue firefighters in trouble during an interior firefighting operation. Assessing risks on an ongoing basis and developing contingency plans should be part of your incident management battle rhythm.

Where to start with contingency planning? Let’s fall back to the CPG 101 planning process. Yep, that works here, too. The first step is to build your planning team. Contingency planning is a responsibility of the Planning Section, but others need to be involved. Working from a traditional ICS structure, I’d certainly suggest involving Safety and Operations, at a minimum, but depending on circumstances, you may wish to expand this, such as considerations for failures in the supply chain (thus Logistics and Finance/Admin), which may be less of a life safety matter, but can heavily impact operational continuity.

With consideration to the Safety Officer, I’d argue that tactical safety is the primary focus of the Safety Officer; while things that can have much broader impact to the incident, while still a concern of the Safety Officer, may require more in-depth and coordinated planning, thus why I tag the Planning Section to lead contingency planning efforts. My experience has always had the Planning Section taking the lead in this. That said, your incident management organization may decide to assign this to the Safety Officer or an assistant Safety Officer. That’s totally fine in my book, so long as it’s being addressed.

Step two of the planning process is to understand the situation. Some of your risks might be really apparent, such as the tornado warning, but others may require a bit more assessment and discussion. If you need to dig deeper, or are looking at a potential need for a variety of contingency plans, I’d recommend using a risk assessment matrix to help assess the likelihood and impacts of the risks you are examining. Here’s an example of a risk assessment matrix from the United States Marine Corps. Sadly, the risk assessment matrix is not yet a common tool in our incident management doctrine and practices in the US, though I do see it referenced elsewhere. In looking at the tool, obviously those with higher probabilities and severity of impact are the priorities on which to focus. Be sure to consider cascading impacts! Keep in mind that this risk assessment, depending on the duration and kinetics of your response and the dynamics of the environment, may need to be performed more than once throughout your operations. It should at least be considered every operational period.

Step three is to identify goals and objectives. Of course, in the broadest sense, our operational priority is always life safety, but we need to refine this a bit based on the specific hazard we are planning for. Second to life safety, we should also be considering operational continuity, ensuring that we can return to current operations with the least disruption possible OR be able to immediately respond to emergent needs created by the hazard in the event of the hazard creating a more kinetic environment. Your plan may also need to address impacts to the public at large (essentially anyone not part of your incident management organization). Depending on your operational scope and the area of responsibility, this may actually exceed the capacity and mandate of your incident management organization. You will need to determine how to ‘right size’ the scope of your planning efforts. This is perhaps a good opportunity to consult the local emergency manager. Don’t lose focus, though. The contingency plan is not intended to save the world. Remember, responder safety is our number one priority.

Step four is developing the plan. This is largely an outline of the essential elements. There are a number of components to consider for your plan. First, with consideration of cascading impacts, we should identify what aspects of the hazard we can mitigate and how. If there are hasty mitigation steps we can take, those may help limit the risk to life, resources, and operations. Next, consider your concept of operations for the life safety aspect of this plan. As with any other emergency operations type of plan, we need to maintain situational awareness and have protocols for notification and warning. Using the tornado warning (during an active response) as an example, who is responsible for maintaining a watchful eye on the skies and keeping tabs on dynamic weather products? If they see something of concern, who do they notify and how? Is there an emergency radio frequency that everyone’s radio will automatically go to if used? Perhaps three blasts of an air horn? Identify what will work for your operating environment. Keep in mind that if the matter is of urgent life safety, you want to minimize the number of steps and the amount of time taken between awareness and notification to responders. Next, upon notification, what is the emergency action plan – i.e., what needs to take place? Evacuation? Shelter in place? Some other action? A great reference for this from the wildfire incident management community is Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes, and Safety Zones (LCES), which is part of their incident safety analysis.

What happens after those protective actions? Ideally some kind of status check-in of the impacted personnel for accountability and continued situational awareness. Who is responsible for communicating that and to whom is it communicated? Is it wise to have some sort of rescue team standing by incase anyone is in trouble? If so, what resources need to be tasked to it, what is its organization, and what are their operating protocols? Can you reasonably keep the rescue team out of harm’s way to help ensure continuity of their capability?

You may also have a continuity of operations (COOP) aspect to this plan, to address how the incident management organization will minimize down time, restore prior operations, and possibly even identify alternate methods of operations. Depending on the hazard, a reassessment of the operation may need to take place to see if objectives will change to address a new situation created by impacts from this secondary incident.

Consider the current operational environment that every jurisdiction is facing at this moment. Jurisdictions, EOCs, and others should certainly have a contingency plan in place right now that addresses things like potential Coronavirus exposures, symptomatic personnel, and personnel that test positive. Many have been dealing with it, but do they have their protocols in writing? Most do not. In New York State, all public employers are now required to develop a plan to address these and other factors for public health emergencies.

Step 5 is plan preparation, review, and approval. This is the actual writing of the plan. Of course, you are in the middle of an incident, and it’s likely that the contingency(ies) you are planning for is breathing down your neck. Depending on how much haste is needed, your plan might be a few bullet points, or it could be a few pages long with more detail. Obviously do whatever is appropriate. Have the planning team members review the plan to ensure that it addresses all critical points and accurately reflects the necessary steps. Have you identified what will trigger the plan? Who is responsible for monitoring the situation? Who is responsible or activating the plan? How will they activate it and notify others? What are the responsibilities of others once they are notified?  Once you and the planning team are satisfied that you’ve addressed all the important points, the plan should be forwarded to the appropriate authority for approval, such as the incident commander, EOC manager, agency administrator, etc.

I’ll also note here that if you have multiple threats and/or hazards for which you are developing contingency plans, try to keep your contingency operations as similar as possible. The more complexity you have, especially to deal with different hazards, the more problems can occur during implementation. For example, your means and methods for notifying personnel of a tornado and a flash flood can likely be the same if their protective actions are also the same.

Lastly, step 6 is implementation of the plan. This is where someone should be working on any mitigation actions that you identified and personnel should be briefed on the plan, so they know what they are responsible for and what they need to do, when, and how.

It seems like a long process, but it can be done in a few minutes for urgent hazards. Some contingency plans may certainly be longer and more complex, especially if you are preparing for something that has a lower risk factor or something that isn’t yet a hazard, like a distant weather front. Several years back, I was part of the overhead team for a state-wide months-long debris removal initiative in the aftermath of a late season hurricane. As operations went on, we eventually entered the next hurricane season, and with that we identified the threat of future tropical storms to our area of operations (an entire state) and the operations we were responsible for. We needed to identify who and how systems would be monitored, trigger points for activation of the plan, and how to communicate emergency actions to several debris removal and debris monitoring contractors. We had time leading into hurricane season and were able to develop a well-crafted plan to meet this need. Fortunately, we didn’t have to use it.

Have you written contingency plans for incidents and events? What lessons have you learned from contingency planning?

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As a final bit on 2020, we are all certainly happy to see it pass. Keep in mind that while the new year offers a mental benchmark, we still have months ahead of us continuing to manage the consequences of the pandemic and our response to it. We have learned a lot of lessons from this response, which every organization should be capturing, if you haven’t already. As we go into the new year, resolve to do something meaningful with those lessons learned. Don’t just let them languish in yet another after-action report. Implement those corrective actions!

Stay safe.

© 2020 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

COVID-19 Vaccine Administration Preparedness

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 4 Comments

On September 16, the CDC released the COVID-19 Vaccination Program Interim Playbook for Jurisdiction Operations. This document lays out some fairly realistic expectations of jurisdictions (mostly states) in their distribution, administration, and tracking of COVID-19 vaccinations. That said, even though there continue to be many unknowns about the vaccines to be utilized, dosages, timetable of availability, and how and where vaccines will be delivered to states, there are reasonable assumptions that could be made and high probability strategies identified, which the CDC failed to do. Instead, as is a hallmark of many poor managers, they provided a punch list of considerably detailed demands but not the very essential information and parameters needed to support good planning. Information is everything.

Garbage in/garbage out is a pretty simple concept of utilizing poor or lacking information to inform a process, which will result in similar outputs. After reviewing New York State’s COVID-19 Vaccination Plan, that concept is fully demonstrated. Most sections of New York State’s plan are vague at best, saying what they will do but not how they will do it. They do identify some roles and responsibilities, but without delineating the boundaries between functionaries. For example: they will utilize pharmacies, local health departments, and state-run facilities, among others, to accomplish public vaccination. This is a solid and expected strategy, but the responsibilities for each are poorly defined for their own operations, much less how they will or won’t work together. Many concepts in the plan are vague at best, and even lacking more defined federal guidance, should have better detail. A big component of vaccination will be community delivery through local health departments, yet this is barely acknowledged. I would have expected this plan to provide guidance and outline preparedness requirements for local health departments, even if they were communicated separately. I acknowledge this is intended to be a strategic level plan, but it doesn’t seem to even consistently provide that measure of detail. I’m left with a lot of questions. And while it may be petty, the document itself is poorly written and published – I expect better from state government.

I’ve not looked at the plans of other states, but if this is indicative of the general state of things, the term ‘shit show’ is the phrase that comes to mind. While we will no doubt improve, there is a long way to go and I think jurisdictions will find themselves in a bind, being poorly prepared when they receive notice of an imminent delivery of vaccines with no detailed plan or assigned resources to get the job done. If anything, we have had plenty of time to prepare for vaccination efforts. There are clearly failures at all levels. While communication between and among federal, state, and local jurisdictions has certainly taken place beyond these documents, the standards and measures need to be more apparent.

We need to do better and be better. Reflecting a bit on the piece I wrote yesterday, we need to be thorough and imaginative in our preparedness efforts without excluding possibilities. Local jurisdictions must be prepared to support vaccinations in their communities. As I’ve written before, most health departments simply don’t have the capacity to do this. Jurisdictions need to engage with their health departments for the best guidance possible and work from that. An 80% solution now is better than a 20% solution later. As with any disaster, local communities are the first stakeholder and the last.

What are you seeing from your states? What do you think is missing in our overall efforts?

© 2020 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

How BC is Acing the Pandemic Test (Guest Post)

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

I’m excited and honored to promote a new blog being written by Alison Poste. Alison has led major disaster response and recovery efforts in Alberta, Canada, including the 2013 floods and the Fort McMurray wildfires, and currently works as a consultant specializing in business continuity, emergency management, and crisis communications. Her new blog, The Afterburn – Emergency Management Lessons from Off the Shelf, takes a critical look at lessons learned and how they are applied.

I’ve pasted her first post below, but also be sure to click the link above to follow her blog. I’m really excited about the insight Alison will be providing!

– TR

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The pandemic has upended how those in the emergency management field have seen traditional response frameworks. Lessons learned from the pandemic response will be useful to governments and the private sector alike in the coming years.

The ICS framework for emergency response is well equipped to address the unique needs of any disaster, including a global pandemic. The rapid scalability of the structure allows the response to move faster than the speed of government. It provides the framework for standardized emergency response in British Columbia (B.C.).

The B.C. provincial government response to the coronavirus pandemic, led by Dr. Bonnie Henry, the Provincial Health Officer (PHO) has received international acclaim. It is useful therefore to learn from the best practises instituted early on in the pandemic to inform future events. 

In February 2020, the Province of B.C. published a comprehensive update to the British Columbia Pandemic Provincial Coordination Plan outlining the provincial strategy for cross-ministry coordination, communications and business continuity measures in place to address the pandemic. Based on ICS, the B.C. emergency response framework facilitates effective coordination by ensuring the information shared is consistent and effective. The Province of B.C. has provided a daily briefing by Dr. Henry and Adrian Dix, the B.C. Minister of Health as a way to ensure B.C. residents receive up to date information from an authoritative source.

While we may consider the COVID-19 pandemic to be a unique event, a number of studies have provided guidance to emergency response practitioners of today. The decisive action taken by the B.C. PHO on COVID-19, has focused on the twin pillars of containment and contact tracing. Early studies regarding the effect of contract tracing on transmission rates have seen promising results, however the tracing remains a logistical burden. As studies indicate, these logistical challenges have the potential to overwhelm the healthcare system should travel restrictions be relaxed, leading to the possible ‘importation’ of new infections. 

B.C. has instituted robust contract tracing mechanisms to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in alignment with best practises in other jurisdictions. When instituted methodically, contact tracing, consistent communication, and Dr. Henry’s mantra to “Be calm. Be kind. Be safe.” remain critical tools to ensure limited spread, a well-informed and socially cohesive population.

How has your organization helped to slow the spread of COVID-19?  As always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions for how to improve the blog.