By Chad Klassen

NEW COVID RESTRICTIONS

Province introduces new indoor gathering restrictions ahead of holiday season

Dec 17, 2021 | 1:34 PM

KAMLOOPS — With a significant uptick in Omicron cases in B.C., the province is adding some new restrictions that will come into effect starting Monday (Dec. 19).

Dr. Bonnie Henry announced on Friday (Dec. 17) during a news briefing there are new indoor gathering restrictions across the province that will last until at least Jan. 31.

“Firstly, the events and gatherings order will be amended to include all indoor personal gatherings, including at rentals, vacation properties, resorts, are limited to your household, plus no more than 10 additional individuals — or one other household,” said Dr. Henry. “This is if everybody is vaccinated. If you are unvaccinated, or have members of your family who are unvaccinated, we cannot have personal gatherings in those settings right now.”

Dr. Henry also announced that all events, regardless of their size, will require vaccine cards.

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“We need to set up the scanning of the QR code. We know that is the best way to ensure that these are valid QR codes and they must be checked at all events,” she noted.

Previously, only events with 50 people or more were required to check for proof of vaccinations. In addition, if capacity at an event has more than 1,000 people, it will be capped at 50 per cent.

“That’s to ensure we have additional space for people. These are events that have been managed very well. We’re not seeing a lot of transmission, but with this highly-transmissible variant [Omicron] we need to have more space, more ventilation,” said Dr. Henry.

All sports tournaments, which would include the Kamloops International Bantam Ice Hockey Tournament, have been suspended until the end of January.

“We have seen that when you have tournaments, which is teams coming from many different places, coming together over a period of days, those are events where we can see spread of this virus and then people taking it back to different communities,” she said.

Dr. Henry said the province had turned the corner and was making progress in the fight against COVID-19, but the Omicron variant is more transmissible and creating some concerns.

“Omicron is rapidly replacing other variants here in B.C., primarily Delta and several strains of Delta that have been causing infections around our province. There have been an rapid increase in the number of new cases of COVID-19 that we’re seeing.”

According to Dr. Henry, there have been dramatic increase in Vancouver Coastal Health from gatherings and in younger people. The good news is, there has been no severe illness due to affected people being younger and most getting Omicron have been immunized.

Dr. Henry knows B.C. will see more Omicron cases and she says the province needs to stop the spread.