At this point, it’s safe to say I know more people in Whistler who've contracted COVID-19 than people who haven't.
Meanwhile, not a single friend or family member in my hometown of Ottawa—a city about 83 times bigger than the resort community I've called home for the past five years—or my home province of Ontario, for that matter, has even come into contact with someone carrying the virus.
It hasn’t happened gradually, either. For the entirety of 2020, the virus seemed like somewhat of a foreign threat. I didn’t know anyone personally who’d tested positive.
Then, just as cases began spiking from coast to coast, the ski season rolled around, bringing with it travellers from all over Canada in search of snow, freer restrictions and a break from reality. Or for one customer who a friend of mine served earlier this winter, the ability to get her Botox touched up after Toronto went into lockdown.
Predictably, following the holidays, cases in Whistler started exploding too.
Whistler’s COVID-19 outbreak: by the numbers
Last week, Whistler’s coronavirus situation hit a new high—or a new low, depending on how you view things. There were 410 people in the Howe Sound health region (which encapsulates Whistler, Pemberton, Squamish and parts of the southern Stl’atl’mx Nation) who tested positive for COVID-19 in the seven-day period spanning March 28 to April 3. That represents almost exactly one per cent of the region’s total population.
While Vancouver Coastal Health hasn’t specified how many of those cases were recorded in Whistler, it’s safe to assume that most of them were.
The week prior, from March 21 to 27, the entire Howe Sound health region detected 247 new cases. In virtually the same reporting period, from March 22 to 28, 218 new cases of the coronavirus were identified in Whistler alone. Again, for reference, that’s about two per cent of Whistler’s permanent population testing positive for the virus in one single week. About two per cent of B.C.'s overall population has tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
It brought the total number of COVID-19 cases in the resort from March 2020 to March 28, 2021 to 1,391. Whistler’s permanent population hovers somewhere around the 12,000 mark, not accounting for second homeowners and a good portion of the resort's seasonal staff.
It was enough to prompt the province to issue a public health order mandating a full shutdown of Whistler Blackcomb, and now, enough to prompt our mayor to call for a community-wide vaccination effort to stop the outbreak from worsening.
This community is beyond lucky to have a mostly young, active population that by all accounts is least likely to suffer the worst possible outcome of the virus. But if anyone does end up with severe symptoms requiring an overnight hospital stay or intensive care, our health care centre doesn’t have the capacity to provide it. Cases in need of that kind of treatment would be sent to Lions Gate, Vancouver General or wherever else there was space.
How is COVID spreading in Whistler?
At first, it was easy to see how people were being exposed, through housemates and workplaces, but now, most people I know who’ve recovered from the virus aren’t sure where they picked it up in the first place.
Case in point: one friend who suspects they came into contact with the virus while delivering take-out. Another close friend recently tested positive, one week after getting out of isolation for being identified as a close contact of a confirmed case, and a few days after receiving their first dose of the vaccine. I know multiple people who have had a number of close calls, who isolated for several two-week periods before eventually testing positive. None of them, as far as I’m aware, know if they were infected with a new variant or if it was just “normal” COVID.
It’s hard to articulate just how demoralizing it feels to be a full year into social distancing measures, see hope on the horizon in the form of a vaccine, and then have everything fall off the rails.
But in the same breath, it almost felt inevitable that something like this would happen. Whistler is a tourism machine, where the trade-off for having the world’s best backyard is more often than not dealing with cramped, shared living accommodations. As frustrating as it was to hear Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry confirm “it is likely that visitors from other parts of Canada initially introduced [the new P1] strain”— in a lot of ways, it feels like our community is paying the price for other people’s poor decisions—it’s tough to imagine what another kind of strain on our local economy would look like without any visitors whatsoever. How many locals wouldn’t have been able to pay their rent this winter without tips from the tourists who were travelling against health officials’ recommendations?
The same locals, it should be noted, who fall into that 20-39 age demographic that makes up the vast majority of new cases, who John Horgan seems convinced are going to “blow things for the rest of us.” The same locals who fill nearly all public-facing customer service positions that keep this town running. I’ll be the first to admit that not every single Whistler resident has been obeying all COVID-19 restrictions 100 per cent of the time. Most have been doing the best they can, but take a second to consider how it feels to know that while you haven't been allowed to spend time with friends outside of your household, it’s been completely OK to see those same friends every day at work, where you’re serving out-of-province travellers who ask, “Where’s a good place to party tonight?” on a daily basis.
Whistler’s road to recovery
The only bright side to all of these positive tests is the relief of immunity for people who have recovered without lingering symptoms, or who’ve already been vaccinated.
The vibe in Whistler has definitely been strange, quieter and a little surreal since the mountain shut down yet again. I'd say people seem to be a little more cautious and are probably going through hand sanitizer faster than they were a few weeks ago, but the novelty of this novel virus has worn off, and life goes on. Tourists, albeit smaller numbers of them, are still rolling into town in search of a change of pace; people are still grabbing drinks on patios and heading outdoors for fresh-air-fuelled adventures with friends.
Personally, I’m caught somewhere between feeling grateful that I've managed to evade this virus so far (*knocks on wood*), nervous to touch communal door handles, a little jealous of my newly-immune pals who no longer have the stress of constantly self-monitoring on their shoulders, and acceptance that it’s probably just a matter of time until I join their ranks (*knocks on wood again*).
I know we’re in the thick of it, and that things will return to some version of normalcy eventually. But until it does, I'm wondering how much worse this will get before it gets better.
