‘These aren’t things to be gotten around’: Dr. Henry stands firm on 50-vehicle cap at drive-ins

On Friday, the provincial government announced that there would be a 50-vehicle cap implemented at drive-in theatres or events that prevented.

Today, Dr. Bonnie Henry took questions after her daily COVID-19 briefing and there seemed to be a heavy focus on that new drive-in rule.

She stood firm behind the new rule, saying that it does apply to 50 vehicles, not the amount of people inside those vehicles, and it was the number they’d be sticking to for now.

“This is this phase where we are gradually moving into opening things up and we need to be very cognizant about having small numbers of people,” she explained.

“(It) becomes a very challenging situation when you have large numbers of vehicles and to be able to monitor and ensure that you don’t have those multiple numbers of connections becomes much more challenging.”

Henry said that people still like to get out of their cars at these types of events and a larger group of people means it’s even harder for health officials if there is exposure to COVID-19 and trying to track down who may have been exposed.

“We have to be cautious, we don’t want to go back to where we were and we do not want to waste all the efforts that we have done as a community across this province,” said Henry.

“This is one of the things that we need to take a deep breath and realize, these aren’t things to be (gotten) around, it’s about trying to have a reasonable approach that we can sustain that we’re not going to put people at risk over the coming weeks and months.”

Henry said that if things continue to trend in the direction they have been in BC and more restrictions get lifted throughout the summer, they can always revisit the number in the coming weeks and months.