By Moira Warburton
VANCOUVER (Reuters) – The Canadian province of British Columbia is bringing back a mask mandate for the central region of the province amid a surge of COVID-19 cases in the area, officials announced on Wednesday, less than a month after easing restrictions.
Masks will once again be mandatory in indoor public spaces in the central Okanagan region, including the city of Kelowna, located around 400 km (250 miles) northeast of Vancouver. Nonessential travel for unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people to and from the region is being discouraged, provincial officials said.
Officials said they were seeing transmission of the highly contagious Delta variant driving case increases in the region, particularly among young people who are not fully immunized.
Cases are rising mainly among unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people in the area, prompting the province to shorten the period between doses of vaccine for residents of the area from seven or eight weeks to four weeks.
Interior Health, whose jurisdiction includes central Okanagan, reported 113 new cases on Wednesday, provincial medical officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said, significantly higher than other regions in the province.
Across Canada, the seven-day moving average of new cases reached 557, an increase of 36% over the previous week, government data released on Wednesday showed. With 57.5% of the eligible population fully vaccinated, many of Canada’s provinces have dropped strict lockdown measures and gradually reopened their economies. But Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, still has mask mandates in place for indoor settings.
British Columbia has vaccinated 81.7% of all eligible adults with their first dose and 65.3% with their second dose, according to the most recent provincial figures. The province reported 150 new cases on Tuesday, 63% of which were in Interior Health’s coverage area, which has around 15% of British Columbia’s population.
(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Vancouver; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
