When are seniors at home?
Photo: Contributed
A row of wheelchairs on the tarmac where a plane full of nursing home patients was being transferred from the Central Okanagan to the Lower Mainland.
Decisions about when residents evacuated from nursing homes in West Kelowna can return will depend on the forest fire situation in the area, according to Interior Health.
Brookhaven Long Term Nursing Home residents were relocated to facilities in Fraser Health, Providence Health, and Vancouver Coastal Health a week ago.
Brookhaven has also struggled with a COVID-19 outbreak in the past few weeks. As of August there were 30 confirmed cases, including 10 residents, 20 employees and two deaths related to the outbreak.
Some residents of Smith Creek Village and Lakeview Lodge were placed in local locations in the community, while others were also sent to the Lower Mainland.
Interior Health said it made the decision to proactively relocate nursing home customers to get them out of the way long before evacuation orders went into effect.
Many of them needed 24-hour care and had to be accompanied by staff, so the move took some time.
We heard from some families who had concerns about how the evacuation was being handled.
In response to a request for information from Castanet, Interior Health announced that it will have more to say in the coming days about when residents can return home. It indicates that the named main contacts have been kept informed about their loved ones on an ongoing basis.
