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You have to stay home.

Everyone in B.C. needs to agree on this if we want to limit the COVID-19 pandemic and that includes not heading to the family cabin for the weekend or having a group Easter Egg Hunt, health officials said Thursday, after announcing that the province had suffered its deadliest 24 hours from the disease so far.

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“There are many of our smaller communities that are very concerned about people coming to vacation homes, to fishing lodges, etc.,” Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer, said during her daily news conference with Health Minister Adrian Dix.

“I am asking people now to forgo those types of travel — all non-essential travel — particularly to smaller communities where we might not have the resources to support you should you become ill or should there be transmission in those communities.”

Henry said compliance — it’s a request, not a formal health order — is key to protecting vulnerable people, particularly seniors.

On the day the global case count surpassed a million with at nearly 53,000 people dead, Henry announced that six more people had died here, bringing the B.C. death toll to 31.

Three of the latest deaths were in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, involving people at long-term care homes. One was in the Fraser Health region and two were on Vancouver Island, the first deaths there. Both were men, one in his 80s, the other in his 90s and both had existing health problems before contracting COVID-19.