Business leaders and seniors advocates in the Interior are calling for a more regional approach to COVID-19 restrictions but the province doesn’t seem to be planning a big change any time soon.

Health Minister Adrian Dix said while on the NL Morning News, there are separate restrictions in place already but things could be modified.

“There are provincial restrictions which Dr. Henry puts in place, there have been from the beginning, at different times including in Interior Health different regional restrictions that are put in place under the authority of the Medical Officer of Health,” he said.

“You may see that in the future in some regions where there are specific problems.”

Dix says while things aren’t as bad here as other areas, the virus is still everywhere in the province.

“There are 104 active cases which is a high point in Interior Health, it’s not like Fraser Health where there’s 2,400 such cases of Vancouver Coastal Health where there’s 800. 104 cases is, shall we say, more that enough. There is risk,” he added.

“We saw a significant COVID-19 outbreak in Merritt. We’ve obviously seen them in Kelowna including in a church and a school outbreak that recently was declared over in Kelowna so there is COVID-19 in the Interior Health Authority.”

Dix says people have been better off in British Columbia than in other parts of the country.

“We don’t have a lot of rules in B.C., contrary to other places and we’ve been more effective in dramatically reducing mortality compared to everywhere else,” he added.

“The rules we have are important and so that means last call (at 10 p.m.) when last call is everywhere in the province because that is a point where people are vulnerable to transmission and all the other rules that are in place are in place for a good reason.”

Dix however did leave the door open to a shift in policy saying,” there may be some regional rules, you may even hear some in the next few days in some other regions about specific sources of infection that are a problem in certain regions but the province wide rules will continue to be the province wide rules.”