There remain four active COVID outbreaks at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, with new cases reported linked to each one.
As of the most recent update from Interior Health, there are 27 cases and two deaths connected to Unit 5 South – 20 cases among patients and seven among staff. That is up by one case from Sunday’s update.
There are also 10 patient cases on Unit 6 South, up by one. There was a death on this unit announced in Sunday’s update, but in an email to NL News Monday, Interior Health said it was a data error.
“The ‘death’ that was reported for 6S should have been categorized in the ‘critical care’ column, not the deaths column,” a statement said. “The only deaths associated with the outbreaks at RIH remain the two from Unit 5S.”
Unit 5 North has six cases – four patients and two staff members – up by two, while on Unit 7 North, there are five cases – four patients and one staff member – up by one.
Interior Health says Unit 5 South is a medical ward, Unit 7 North is a renal/cardiac ward, Unit 6 South is a surgical ward and Unit 5 North is a stroke/rehab ward.
Speaking to NL News last week, the Medical Health Officer for Kamloops says there are no fixed rules when it comes to managing outbreaks.
Dr. Carol Fenton said the main goal is to contain the spread of the virus and then to make sure that there aren’t any cases that go undetected.
“Typically, the cases are isolated. We figure out who their contacts are, so those folks are isolated,” she said. “In principle, that separation is really important. It is definitely making sure that while the cases are in one area by themselves, the people who may be incubating but are not yet positive are on their own, and the people who are hopefully not exposed are protected from those two groups.”
“And then for those that we don’t know about, we limit the movement as much as possible. So generally, admissions and discharges are on hold while the investigation is happening, and then depending on the risk factors visitations are also usually on hold for units on outbreak,” she added.
On Wednesday, Interior Health brought in temporary visitor restrictions because of the COVID situation.
Interior Health did not say how long these restrictions would be in place for, though it likely will be in place until all of these outbreaks come under control.
