B.C.’s health minister wants young people to stop holding large indoor parties given the restrictions on gatherings in the province.

Adrian Dix made those comments as the number of cases in young people has been on the rise in recent weeks.

“I want to say something to those who organized private parties, to those who are attending them, and those who are thinking of other ways to hold large gatherings in the middle of a global pandemic: enough,” he said at the daily COVID-19 briefing. “Refusing to accept the COVID-19 changes everything. It puts all of us at risk and all that we aspire to do and be this summer.”

“The goal of public health officials isn’t to ruin anybody’s summer or limit their chances to party. That’s the work of COVID-19.”

Dix says there are now over 1,500 British Columbians in self-isolation after they were exposed to COVID-19 because some people did not follow the rules that were put in place.

“Its not the location of the behaviour, its the behaviour in the location,” he added. “Whether its table hopping or packed houseboats or free-for-all parties in a private residence, large groups are the biggest welcome mat there is for COVID-19 and its time to stop putting out that welcome mat.”

The province has moved to restrict the number of guests at vacation rentals like cabins and houseboats to the capacity of the rental plus a maximum of five visitors. That is in addition to new restrictions for bars and nightclubs with among other things limits the number of people at a table to six.

“Since then, new behaviours have emerged and as we know, large private parties come with huge public consequences. We’ve seen this,” Dix said.

“No matter where break the rules designed to break the curve, the results can be the same that COVID-19 can be on the rise and we don’t want to see that.”

Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, says there are at least 45 cases of COVID-19 now linked to private parties in the Metro Vancouver area. She says the exposure event is similar to an outbreak in Kelowna connected to private gatherings over the Canada Day long weekend.

“It seems to be that there are overlapping social groups that have been to a number of parties, slightly different to what we saw in the Interior, but a similar concept,” Henry said, noting that about 400 people are in self-isolation related to those parties.

“Even though they may have been smaller individual parties, the overlapping groups meant that there’s a large number of people that were potentially exposed.”

As of Tuesday, Interior Health says there were 149 cases associated with the Kelowna outbreak out of the 377 in the health authority.

“Cases are linked to Kelowna through ongoing investigations and may not be captured in the Kelowna numbers immediately,” said IHA spokesperson Karl Hardt. “For example, a case reported as new last Wednesday, may have been linked to Kelowna through investigations over the weekend.”

Henry and Dix reported 47 new cases of COVID-19 and no new deaths for a second straight day on Thursday.