Vancouver Island’s top doctor is pleading with residents to stay away from the Lower Mainland amid a surge of new COVID-19 cases in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.
Dr. Richard Stanwick, chief medical health officer for the Island Health Region, said Thursday that a new outbreak at the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital’s transitional care unit was likely transmitted to the facility by someone who’d been in Metro Vancouver.
Five health-care workers have since tested positive at the facility.
“If you can avoid travelling to the Lower Mainland, please do so — it’s one of these situations where you are going to a place where COVID is circulating at much higher levels than the island, and what you’re really doing is putting yourself at an increased risk,” Stanwick said.
“We also want to give the Lower Mainland a chance to get things under control, and having people come from elsewhere probably is just going to compound the issue.”
Vancouver Island has recorded 133 cases of COVID-19 since September, more than 100 of them related to travel.
The Lower Mainland, meanwhile, has seen an explosion of cases in recent weeks, prompting new region-specific restrictions.
In the last 48 hours, the region reported 808 cases in the Fraser Health region and 249 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region.
All but two of the 155 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in B.C. are in the Lower Mainland.
BC Ferries is offering refunds to anyone who booked a trip to the mainland and wants to cancel. That refund policy will remain in place as long as the provincial recommendation to avoid travel does.