B.C.’s provincial health officer has announced seven COVID-19 cases in this province that are “directly linked” to an outbreak at an oil sands project north of Fort McMurray.

Dr. Bonnie Henry says those seven cases are in the Interior Health and Northern Health regions.

The announcement comes after Interior Health warned people of potential spread from the Kearl Lake oil sands project, after 12 people at the camp tested positive for COVID-19.

“They [health authorities] are doing contact tracing and have identified all of the close contacts who we know about at this point. We expect there will be more people, we know that there are people coming back and forth.”

Henry is ordering anyone who has come home to B.C. from Kearl Lake work camps since March 15 to self-isolate for two weeks; she points out people who are asymptomatic and returned more than two weeks would no longer need to self-isolate.

“If they had symptoms over that period of time of if they continue to have symptoms, we want you to connect with 811 and tell us about that. Anyone who has returned in the past two weeks must continue to self-isolate.”

Meanwhile, Henry has announced 52 new cases and five new deaths in the past two days. She says there were three deaths on Saturday and two on Sunday from the virus, while 29 of those case were reported between Saturday and Sunday and 23 were reported today.

The province has now seen 86 deaths and 1,699 reported cases of COVID-19. Of those cases, 153 have been reported in the Interior Health region.

Henry also says 1,039 out of those 1,699 are now considered recovered, which is 62 per cent of reported cases.