B.C.’s top doctor says she has no issues with Albertans who want to visit the province as long as they’re fully vaccinated against COVID 19.

Dr. Bonnie Henry was responding to Alberta’s plans to end routine contact tracing outside of high-risk settings as of yesterday, July 29, while also no longer requiring people who test positive to isolate as of mid-August.

“We’re happy to have you come fully vaccinated,” Henry said. “While we don’t expect that we will be turning people away, we do expect that people will take the precautions that we’re requiring of everybody once they’re in British Columbia.”

“We are seeing an increase in cases – not unexpected – in most places, but as we mentioned, we have had an rapid increase in one area of the province (the Central Okanagan) and there are additional measures that are in place in that area to try and prevent transmission.”

Earlier in the week, Henry said because of a uptick in COVID vaccines across the province, there is no longer a need to bring in restrictions across the board, as was the policy earlier in the year when places like Surrey and Abbotsford were the COVID hotspots.

“We don’t need to take as broad a cross province restrictions because we have vaccines now. So yes, this is a new strategy because we have high immunization rates,” Henry said. “So that means the virus is not going to spread as widely and as rapidly as we saw it even a few months ago.”

“Before we had vaccine, the virus was really spreading very rapidly with people moving. We’re now in a new place and in this new place, as part of our Restart thinking, it is being able to manage it locally because we have such high levels of immunization in most places around the province.”

Henry says it is important for people to get vaccinated as soon as possible as officials were expecting to see clusters of cases in people who have not yet been vaccinated.

“We are going to see clusters and flare ups in communities in amongst people who aren’t yet protected,” she added. “It is a different approach and it is because we have that really important and effective tool of immunization that allows us to be more focal.”

However, Henry also says the return of COVID restrictions in the central Okanagan should be a wake up call to everyone.

“Being vaccinated not only protects us. Our community is at risk as well. We’ve seen that when we have high rates in long term care homes,” she said, noting the pandemic is still very much a thing, even though restrictions were eased on July 1.

“We protect everybody in that home as well. This is an example where getting the immunization and the protection in the community is going to make a difference for the entire community.”

“For those other communities both in Interior Health and the North, but also in the Lower Mainland, there’s some communities where rates are lower,” she added. “This is a wake up of what can happen if we start to see introduction, particularly of the transmissible variants. It can spread very quickly.”

According to the most recent data, there were 153 COVID cases in the Kelowna area during the week of July 18 to July 24 – the most in any one local health authority in B-C during that week.

“While young people may not get as sick, some of them do end up in hospital. Certain percentage of young people go on to have long term symptoms that can be quite debilitating,” Henry said.

“I’m just grateful that most people in British Columbia have stepped up. Getting protection is not just for us, its for our families and our communities too.”

B.C. has no plans to change its approach to isolation or contact tracing

Health Minister Adrian Dix said Friday that the province has no plans to change its approach to mandatory isolation or contact tracing as the number of cases in the province trends upwards.

“We have no plans, none, to change our requirements around self-isolation in B.C. We have no plans, none, to change our approach to contact tracing in B.C.,” he said, when asked about Alberta’s decision.

Dix says B.C. health officials are focused on increasing vaccination rates, particularly in Interior Health because of the outbreak in the Kelowna-area. That’s a part of the province that tends to see a number of Albertans, though Dix did not directly address if the new rules in Alberta could result in more transmission in British Columbia.

“I don’t want to caricature what they’re doing there. They have outstanding public leadership in Alberta,” Dix said. “No one needs to take an approach of blame here, we need to work and encourage and support communities and that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”

While people in Alberta who test positive for COVID-19 will no longer be required to self-isolate as of August 16, Alberta Health says it will remain “strongly recommended” – a decision that led to protests from doctors in Calgary and Edmonton.

“I firmly believe that quarantine and isolation can help prevent the spread of COVID-19, especially in light of the spread of the Delta variant,” federal Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam, said.

Dr. Howard Njoo, the country’s deputy chief public health officer, also raised concerns that Alberta’s relaxed measures could have a ripple effect in other provinces.

“Everyone is alive to the fact that there could be, as they say, ‘knock-on effects’ to the other provinces and territories with travel within Canada,” he said.

B.C. reported 243 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday – a two-month high – with 131 of those cases in Interior Health. Active cases in B.C. are at 1,231 with 693 in Interior Health.

Alberta meanwhile had the most active cases of COVID-19 in any Canadian province, with the Delta variant the dominant strain.

Avoid travel to Kelowna unless you’re fully vaccinated: Kamloops MHO

The Medical Health Officer for Kamloops is asking people to hold off on plans to travel to the Kelowna area because of a spike in new COVID-19 cases there.

Speaking on the NL Morning News, Dr. Carol Fenton says the exception is if you’re fully vaccinated, as about two-thirds of new cases in the Kelowna area are in people who have not been vaccinated, while another one-third is in partially vaccinated people.

“So that’s for people who’ve had both doses and then waited a full week for that immunity to set in,” she said. “That’s because it is possible to be infected when fully vaccinated but it tends to be very mild and much less transmissible.”

While Kamloops was doing well on the vaccine front in the past, Fenton says the numbers are beginning to lag behind the provincial average.

“The provincial average of dose 1 is about 80 per cent, and we’re sitting at around 77 per cent. We’ve lost some of that momentum that we had,” Fenton said.

“We’re catching up for dose 2, where we’re sitting at abut 62 per cent, which is great, but under the mask recommendation, it means at least 40 per cent of people should be wearing masks indoors at all times.”

Fenton adds Interior Health declared the COVID outbreak in the Central Okanagan in the hopes of preventing hospitalizations and deaths from increasing.

“The main driver for our decision making in the Interior is whether or not we can stay on top of the contact tracing,” she said.

“We know that hospitalizations and deaths tend to lag behind infection rates. So we won’t know yet what the impact of these rising numbers in the Central Okanagan will be, but we prefer to take a more cautious approach and stay on top of it.”

– With files from The Canadian Press