
Downtown Kelowna. Photo taken July 2020
B.C.’s health minister says he appreciates the cooperation from officials in Kelowna, following the outbreak of COVID-19 as a result of private parties around Canada Day.
Adrian Dix says Interior Health continues to manage the situation, noting there has been a drop in the number of active cases in recent weeks.
“That doesn’t mean we are out of the woods or everything is finished now, but I think what you’ve seen in Interior Health was leadership from people in Interior Health and from people there who started to learn from things that had occurred and made adjustments and we really appreciate their help,” Dix said.
“I just want to express our appreciation to Mayor [Colin] Basran in Kelowna and his team. The city of Kelowna has done an outstanding job working with Interior Health right at the beginning of when we started to see cases in Interior Health and around Kelowna.”
As of Friday, Interior Health says there are now 159 cases in the health authority linked to Kelowna. Meanwhile, data from the BC CDC showed that as of August 6, the number of active cases in the Interior was back down to 20.
The health authority continues to have the lowest median age for all cases at 36 years, followed by Northern Health at 37, Fraser Health at 43, Vancouver Island and 50, and Vancouver Coastal Health at 54.
While he says the outbreak was avoidable, Dix notes the response to it is a model of how health officials react should an outbreak happen.
“Members of council, the city, all of the leadership in Interior Health, people such as MLA Norm Letnick, so all the things that you’ve seen in Kelowna, the reaching out by the city, the working together has had a positive effect,” Dix said.
At the last update, Interior Health officials were warning of possible COVID-19 exposure at seven locations in Kelowna, including a strip club, a clothing store, two restaurants, a spin studio and two hotels.