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“I tell my patients: stay at home. Your home is your society, so if you live with a partner, if you live with children, of course those are the people we have contact with all the time, those are the people that you can go for a walk outside with, but you cannot go for a walk outside and meet up with anybody else. Everyone in your home is your society. This is a tough ask. But we’re all human too. These are extraordinary measures we’re asking people to do but they’re really important.”

The warm weather has been a big challenge in delivering this message, she admitted. Solo walks, or walks with your tight circle from home are OK, but do you really need to go to the store today, she asked rhetorically.

“If you’re cooking dinner with what you have in your pantry and you’re missing one ingredient, do you really need to go to the store? No you do not. Try that recipe without the nutmeg. Minimize how often you’re going outside to once a week,” she said. “You can call a friend while you’re out on your walk and you can talk to them, call a family member, you could call someone you haven’t talked to in a while … You should not be meeting up with people who are outside of your household. And it’s imperative that we do these things now, because the numbers of cases are going to increase. We know that because of science. And we also know that what’s reported daily has a five to seven days lag right now because of the time it takes her positive cases to come back.”

Physicians have also raised concerns that many B.C. residents, particularly youth, are not paying attention to the news and are not taking self isolation seriously.