After several months of having a provincial health order in place mandating the use of face masks in public indoor spaces like stores, restaurants, and libraries, British Columbia made mask-wearing a "recommendation" only as of July 1, 2021.
But in the wake of surging coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in the province - in particular, those of the more nimble "Delta" variant of the virus and affecting predominantly British Columbians who were not fully vaccinated - provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry reinstated the mask mandate, which went into effect Aug. 25.
Once again, donning a face mask is required of anyone 12 and older while on Vancouver's public transit system, inside grocery stores, or at an event at BC Place - among others.
According to a recent poll conducted on V.I.A., 75 per cent of Vancouver residents are "strongly in favour" of the mask mandate, indicating an overwhelming majority of locals support the reinstated public health order.
Just 13 per cent of locals polled consider themselves strongly opposed.
While the poll was open to responses from anywhere in the world, approximately half of the votes came from within Vancouver, and the local votes were generally on par with the total votes.
Find more local COVID-19 coverage from V.I.A. and Glacier Media HERE. Vote in more V.I.A. polls HERE.
We polled 776 Vancouver Is Awesome readers and asked the question: How do you feel about the return of the mask mandate in B.C.?
The poll ran from 8/24/2021 to 8/26/2021. Of the 776 votes, we can determine that 386 are from within the community. The full results are as follows:
This result provides for a 95% confidence level +/- 3.52% margin of error in the local community.
Vancouver Is Awesome uses a variety of techniques to capture data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots, and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.
