The COVID-19 outbreak at Sandalwood Retirement Resort in Kelowna has been deemed by Interior Health as stable, as there have been no new positive cases reported.
“It’s in control, mainly because of the vaccine,” said Dr. Albert de Villiers, Interior Health’s chief medical health officer.
Currently, there are still 25 positive cases: 24 residents and one staff member, along with one death.
De Villiers said 95 per cent of the residents at the independent living residence are vaccinated.
“(Many of the positive cases) were not symptomatic, of if they had symptoms they had very mild symptoms, and that’s mostly due to the vaccine, because people don’t get severe as disease with the vaccine,” said de Villiers.
“The vaccine definitely helps keep people out of the hospital and keeps poeple away from the complications of COVID-19.”
Interior Health said concerns over vaccine effectiveness is not a concern for them.
“I would say people should not be concerned about vaccine effectiveness. They should be concerned if they don’t have the vaccine,” said de Villiers.
“In a place like Sandalwood, there’s about 160-170 people living there, so if we did not have the vaccine we would (have) seen 70-80 per cent of those people having COVID-19 and many more hospitalized. So they vaccine is definitely working,” de Villiers told Global News on Tuesday.
The health authority says they are keeping a close eye on the facility, with most of the positive cases found through asymptomatic testing.
Interior Health is reminding the public that it is possible to contract COVID-19 even if you are vaccinated and that no vaccine is 100 per cent effective against COVID-19.
“We are anticipating that this (outbreak) should be over relatively soon,” said de Villiers.
“Unlike some of the other outbreaks in the beginning that were months and months, this will be a few weeks.”