17 COVID-19 cases now linked to Belleville General Hospital outbreak

A COVID-19 outbreak at Belleville General Hospital in Eastern Ontario continues to grow, with 17 cases associated as of Tuesday.

The outbreak is located on the hospital’s Quinte 5 unit, and began last week.

The cases are a mixture of staff and patients. As of Monday, six patients and eight staff members tested positive.

Quinte Health Care, the organization that runs the hospital, also confirmed that while not all testing is back yet some of the cases involved in the outbreak are variants of concern.

Hospital officials say this is not surprising, given the prevalence of variants in the community.

Since the outbreak was declared early last week, all patients in the Quinte 5 unit have been swabbed, and staff who have worked on the unit continue to go for surveillance testing.

Quinte 5 has been closed to new non-COVID admissions, while patients who are confirmed or suspected to be COVID-positive will still be admitted to the unit.

Any non-COVID patients that were already admitted to the unit before the outbreak began will remain in the unit, or will be discharged when appropriate.

After the outbreak was declared, the hospital implemented enhanced control measures to prevent further transmission among patients and staff.

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