New year's parties strictly off limits

Avoid gatherings, Dr. Henry says, as COVID-19 infections mount

B.C. health officials are urging people to avoid gatherings in celebration of New Year's Eve.

The request comes as the province released five days of COVID-19 figures over the holiday season on Tuesday, showing 2,206 new cases for a total of 50,815 infections since the pandemic began.

The province also reported 74 deaths from the virus, largely among those living in long-term care or assisted-living facilities.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said people need to follow public health orders as she issued a reminder before New Year's Eve that social gatherings aren't allowed. “We need to make our entire holiday season a quiet holiday season, including the upcoming new year,” she said.

She reiterated that “any social gathering isn't allowed at this time,” unless people are in the same household.

That's the case, particularly in light of the recent discovery by officials with the Island Health Authority of a COVID-19 variant that originated in the U.K., Henry added.

“This virus is even more infectious, potentially, with this variant. So it means we have to be even more adherent (to public health orders),” she said.

She said that health officials are ensuring that the one person who travelled from the U.K. and who was found through genome sequencing to have the variant remains in quarantine and that their household has also been tested to be “extra careful.”

“It may well be we may identify others who have this variant who are in B.C. now,” she said.

We expect testing to go up this week and it is likely that we will see more cases.

Health officials are doing genome sequencing on anybody who has been in the U.K. in the last few weeks and has had a positive test — and that's “several dozen” people.

Henry said there were lower COVID-19 numbers over the holiday period, partly because fewer people wanted to be tested and potentially have to go into quarantine, which is worrisome.

“We expect testing to go up this week and it is likely that we will see more cases,” she said.

It takes five to seven days, on average, for symptoms to show up, which means people who contracted the virus during Christmas gatherings would start getting symptoms in the coming days, Henry said.

Almost 12,000 people have been vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, she said.