Photo: Contributed
Spring Valley Care Center
The COVID-19 outbreak at the Spring Valley Care home in Kelowna increased again on Friday and a new resident caught the virus.
The outbreak, which was declared on April 28th, now affects 23 residents and 10 employees or “others”.
On February 15, the only time the province released the data, 83 percent of Spring Valley residents had taken the COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Albert de Villiers, Interior Health’s chief medical health officer, said many of the cases in the recent outbreak were asymptomatic due to the vaccinations.
Even so, three people recently died in the Spring Valley eruption. On Friday, Dr. de Villiers did not elaborate on these three deaths, citing privacy concerns, but he said they saw elderly, vaccinated people die after contracting the virus, but not necessarily from the virus.
“We have seen some people get a dose who actually died, but you need to remember that the people who live in some of these long-term care facilities are the elderly with many other diseases,” he said.
“So we’ve had people who died of cancer, or they were palliative for some other reason, because they’re very old, almost 100 years old or so, and then they die from something else at that point, and by the way, because they were at the facility, they also had COVID. But they were asymptomatic when it came to COVID, they didn’t die of COVID. “
Dr. de Villiers claims that the COVID-19 vaccinations in local nursing homes have largely proven their worth.
“What we have seen is that the people who have actually been vaccinated, especially with two doses of vaccine, are either fully protected or have mild symptoms,” he said.
“We’ve definitely seen that people who get COVID after they get the vaccine are much, much milder, but unfortunately there will still be people for other reasons.”
Kelowna’s other COVID-19 outbreak leaves 26 residents and two employees who tested positive at Sandalwood Retirement Resort. One person in this facility has also died.
The outbreak was declared over at the Cottonwoods Care Center in Kelowna on Tuesday. Two residents of this nursing home died during the outbreak.
