Interior Health’s Medical Health Officer for Kamloops says she is disappointed that people would organize a large “music festival protest” west of the city this past weekend, in the Tranquille-Criss Creek Road area.

“Ultimately, parties are still not allowed. Gatherings are not allowed,” Dr. Carol Fenton said. “It is really disappointing to hear given how hard the rest of the community is working to keep everybody safe.”

Fenton says these kind of events go in the face of the public health orders against large gatherings aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19.

“I’m always concerned about things that could drive up the numbers in our community,” she said, when asked by NL News. “You know we saw that around the winter holiday season. There were gatherings that happened and we saw that transmission drove that peak that saw in the Thompson-Cariboo in January and February.”

“We’ve managed to bring that curve down since then but we’re in a delicate position right now.”

RCMP say there were over 200 people who were camping in motorhomes, tents and trailers at the gathering. Staff Sgt. Bill Wallace says many of the people who were there did not cooperate with police as they tried to identify the organizers.

It does not appear any arrests were made over the weekend weekend but both the RCMP and the Provincial Health Office are investigating.

“As the local health area, we will be responsible for monitoring symptom patterns, increased tests and investigating as well as following the RCMP and provincial investigation results closely to see if they have any actions for us,” Fenton said.

She went on to say that the more careful people are in following the restrictions, the sooner we’ll be able to return to normal life.

“All of the restrictions are directly related to the transmission we are seeing in the communities. So if we can drive that down, the sooner we’ll be able to have those gatherings,” noted Fenton. “It is everyone’s job, and the sooner we can do it, the sooner we can have legal parties.”

Interior Health’s Chief Medical Health Officer, Dr. Albert de Villiers, says the health authority can take action under the province’s state of emergency.

“We do have the power under the act as well to write tickets to people. Sometimes it is a little bit difficult to pinpoint who exactly organized it but in a situation like this if we can pinpoint who organized it there can be a ticket issued to the organizer as well,” he said, echoing a point made by RCMP yesterday.

Anyone with information regarding this event or information about the organizers is asked to contact the Tk’emlúps RCMP detachment at (250) 314-1800.