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Is COVID-19 taking a summer break?
Interior Health's Medical Health Officer Dr. Silvina Mema is generally pleased with how people are conducting themselves at this stage of our COVID-19 Restart Plan, but there are some concerns.
"I'm seeing that people are, for the most part, respecting and following the guidelines," she said in an interview with KelownaNow, but she has a warning to those acting like it's over.
"We may see a second wave," Mema said.
When asked about her own observations here in our part of the province, she was quick to offer a compliment.
"The reason that we are doing so well is that people have taken the recommendations pretty seriously and I am confident that people are going to continue to follow those principles," she said.
"We have seen that the number of cases has declined enormously in BC and particularly in the interior. We haven't had cases that we don't know where they acquired the disease from for a number of weeks now. So that's very good news."
But she is concerned that some people take the good news as a reason to put all of the measures we've adopted in our daily lives behind us.
"Where people may be failing is perhaps seeing the flattening of the curve, the success that we've had as perhaps interpreting it as the virus has gone away and now there is no longer any risk," Mema explained.
"And that I think is falling victim of the success," she added. "People may begin to think that the risk is gone and that's not true. The risk still remains. Because although we don't see a lot of cases here in the interior, it takes one person coming from another province, it takes one person that has symptoms or has very mild symptoms with the disease to get a little cluster of disease out, so how many people get affected by that single case will depend on the interactions that person had."
Mema said the absence of the disease in the general population could be temporary, suggesting things could easily take a turn for the worse in the fall.
"This may be a big break, a good break that we are getting in between waves," she said. "
"If we need to restrict interactions in the fall," warned Mema, "be prepared to do that."
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