COVID-19 outbreaks continue to mount at care homes and health facilities across the Southern Interior.
Kelowna General Hospital is dealing with another outbreak that was announced on Jan. 28, just one day after its previous outbreak was declared over by Interior Health.
There are currently 13 patient cases in the rehab unit of the hospital.
“Additional infection control measures have been implemented including putting a pause on admissions, pausing non-essential visitors, and testing patients and staff,” Interior Health said.
On top of the hospital outbreak, there are 22 other COVID-19 outbreaks in the Southern Interior. Nine were declared in the last week.
The most recent was announced today, at Spring Valley Care Centre in Kelowna. On Jan. 30, there was an outbreak in Kamloops’s Overlander. On Jan. 28 there was an outbreak at the Dr. Andrew Pavillion in Summerland, in addition to the KGH outbreak. Penticton’s Village at the Station had an outbreak declared Jan. 27. To read the full list go to the health facilities outbreak page on Interior Health.
While the numbers are continuing to grow at a rapid rate, Medical Health Officer Dr. Silvina Mema said in an interview last week that the effects of this wave of the disease are less devastating.
“We need to balance these outbreak measures against how severe the disease is,” Mema said.
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“We don’t want to restrict visitors, restrict social interactions, isolate seniors when the disease is really very mild for those that are vaccinated.”
Mema said the outcomes that health officials are seeing are, for the most part, very mild for individuals in long-term care homes that are fully vaccinated, which most of them are.
“It is important to say that those that are not fully vaccinated remain at risk even within long-term care facilities,” she said. “So we are seeing that severe outcomes apply more to those will have not received two or three doses of the COVID vaccine.”
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