B.C. broke another weekend record for new COVID-19 cases with 1,120 new confirmed infections since Friday, and six deaths.
There were 817 new cases confirmed last weekend, which was a record.
Daily cases since Friday were well over 300 each day -- with 389 between Saturday and Sunday alone.
"These numbers are concerning for all of us," deputy provincial health officcer Reka Gustafson said Monday.
The Fraser Health region is the hardest hit, with 830 cases since Friday, compared to 234 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region.
Gustafson fielded questions about the potential risk of increased transmission on public transit, and why B.C. has decided against cooperating with the Health Canada to roll out a new contact tracing app in B.C.
Gustafson said the primary concern when it comes to spreading the virus is from large, private indoor gatherings with an absence of safety protocols.
And while it is difficult in contact tracing to determine whether or not the virus has been spread on public transit, Gustafson said the evidence suggests that public transit and airlines are not significant sources of transmission, because of the safety protocols in place.
"If you add up the summary of evidence, the totality of evidence, about where transmission is occurring, it does not occur through casual contact," she said. "It does not occur in places where people have safety protocols in place.
"We are finding that those are not major sources of transmission," Gustafson said.
As for Health Canada's COVID alert app, Gustafson said her office reviewed it and concluded it doesn't really add much to the existing contact tracing system in place in B.C.
The app only tells someone if they have been in recent proximity to someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
"It wasn't felt that, at this point in British Columbia, it would have additional benefit (or) would be addittional value to the existing contact tracing," Gustafson said.
"At the moment, based on what we see here in British Columbia, the additional information provided by the app wouldn't add to the existing ways and methods of contact tracing."
Here are the daily case counts for Monday, November 2, with numbers from Friday, October 30, the last reporting period, in brackets:
New cases: 1,120 (272)
BC Total: 15,501 (14,381)
Active cases: 2,945 (2,390)
Hospitalized: 90 (78)
Intensive care: 19 (25)
Deaths: 269 (263)
Confirmed cases by region:
Vancouver Coastal Health: 234
Fraser Health: 830
Island Health: 9
Interior Health: 36
Northern Health: 10
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