Dr. Bonnie Henry Aug. 10.

(KATHY MICHAELS - EDITOR / iNFOnews.ca)

B.C. needs to do better in its effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, the province's top doctor said today.

"If your friends invite you to a party and it doesn't feel right, don't go," Dr. Bonnie Henry said today, Aug. 10, after announcing 131 new cases of COVID-19, raising the total number of cases across the province to 4,065.

"There's no better excuse than a global pandemic to be able to do the right thing and encourage your friends to do the right thing."

Right now, the right choices aren't being made, particularly among young people who have represented the bulk of new COVID-19 cases in recent weeks due in large part to big parties.

"Gatherings with young people, many of whom you don't know, even if there are fewer than 50 people are a concern," she said.

"We saw that on July 1 weekend. We've seen that across the province where people have been coming together and having group gatherings, with different people and not maintaining distances from people they don't know. This is because people are often inside and in close contact with crowds of people that they don't know for several hours."

Teams across the province have worked to ensure that some of these parties have been broken up and there have been some fines levied in the last 24 hours, also.

That, however, shouldn't be required. The tools to keep the pandemic at bay are well known by now. 

Orders and recommendations are in place for all of our protection, she said.

"Do not ask people to break these rules," she said.

"They are there for the safety of everybody in establishments like restaurants and bars and other places. We need to be in this together, we need to keep our groups small, and we need to support each other in keeping these layers of protection in place. We are in a time when we know people can unknowingly spread the virus to others, particularly young people who are feeling well, and may quite easily spread it and these are why these precautions we take right now are important for all of us. And these next two weeks will again be critical for us. We need to hold our line and bend our curve back down, where it belongs."

Of the cases to date, 1,220 are in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 2,139 people in the Fraser Health region, 148 people in the Vancouver Island Health region, 391 people in the Interior Health region, 96 people in the Northern Health region, and 71 people reside outside of Canada.

There are currently 445 active cases across the province, nine are in hospital, three are in critical care. There have been no new deaths over the last three days, leaving our total at 195 people who have died from COVID-19.

In addition, we have 3,425 people who have recovered and 1,765 people are being followed for having close contacts of the case of COVID-19.

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