Indoor gatherings at restaurants and churches and group fitness classes will be put on hold for the next three weeks provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said Monday.
She said the step, which starts at midnight tonight and will last until April 19, is meant to be a "circuit breaker" in the face of the drastic increase in cases over the last week or so.
Dining in restaurants will be banned, although restaurateurs will be able to provide dining on patios, delivery and pick-up service. Church services will be limited to outdoor settings with measures in place. Fitness clubs will be restricted to one-on-one and individual activities.
When they return to school, students in Grades 4 to 12 will be required to wear their masks full-time while at school, and mask-wearing has been strongly encouraged among younger students in kindergarten to Grade 3.
Henry's orders Monday did not mention the April 1 changes to visits to B.C.'s elder care facilities.
She said last week the requirement for a single designated visitor to an elder care facility would be lifted to allow visits by multiple family members after more than a year of tough restrictions.
Henry said there have been 2,518 new cases reported in B.C. over the last three days. B.C. Centre for Disease Control said there were 6,902 active cases in the province, up 2,501 from 12 days previous.
Active cases in Northern Health stood at 340 as of Sunday, down from 357 on Friday but still up from 304 as of March 17. Hospitalizations remained fairly steady at 30 with 12 in intensive care.
Henry also reported six more deaths due to COVID over the weekend, none of them in Northern Health where the count has remained at 120 since March 23.
Health officials are concerned that the increase in variants from the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa are driving much of the current transmission.
"Our goal throughout the pandemic has been to find here in B.C. our balance." Henry said. "We want to protect those who are most vulnerable and keep as much as is safe to be open in our communities.
"As a result of these recent increases and what we've seen about the increase in variants of concern, our balance in B.C. is now off and this is a very challenging time.
"In the last six days, we've seen the start of exponential growth. We've seen more hospitalizations and more people requiring critical care and the strain on our acute care systems is ramping up. We do not yet have enough people protected with our vaccine to keep our loved ones in our communities safe.
"A circuit breaker is now required to break the chains of transmission in our province and allow us to safely move forward through this next phase."
Making a rare appearance at Henry's twice-weekly press conferences, Premier John Horgan said the case counts have become "unacceptably high - in fact higher today than at the worst point in the second wave between November and January of this year."
He said positivity rates have jumped 50 per cent and urged people, notably those ages 20-39 years old, to curtail their social activities.
"My appeal to you is do not blow this for the rest of us, do not blow this for your parents and your neighbours and for others who have been working really, really hard, making significant sacrifices so we can get good outcomes for everybody."
Only last week, Henry eased restrictions on indoor religious services, but that has also been reversed.
"It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce this. I cannot in all conscience … allow these types of activities to happen right now," she said.
Henry also urged people to limit their travel between communities to work and medical reasons only. Workers are strongly urged to work from home, if possible, Henry said.
She noted in particular a spread in cases related to people returning home from Whistler-Blackcomb and said the resort will be closed for the same three-week period.
She also singled-out Surrey for high rates of exposures and positivity.
As for the North, Henry said the numbers have been concerning for the size of the region's population. The positivity rate, or percentage of tests yielding a positive result, stood at 15.9 per cent as of Sunday, by far the highest among the province's health regions.
Henry said some consideration was given to limiting the restrictions to the Lower Mainland before deciding to make them province wide.
"What we saw in October is repeating itself now, is that we've started to see a slow increase and then a rapid takeoff and it starts where the population is greatest, where the numbers are greatest, but it very rapidly spreads," Henry said.
- with files from The Canadian Press
