FILE PHOTO - Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED / Province of B.C

The two largest hospitals in the Interior Health region are feeling the effects of the continuing spread of COVID-19.

In Kelowna, three operating rooms have been closed at Kelowna General Hospital, Health Minister Adrian Dix said at a news conference today, Nov. 9.

“Last week, Kelowna General Hospital had reduced two operating rooms to compensate for staff who did not meet vaccination requirements,” Dix said. “This week, only one operating room had to be reduced for this reason. To support critical care, though, Kelowna General Hospital has reduced an additional two operating rooms.”

He did not mention how many surgeries will need to be cancelled at the hospital because to the reduction in operating room space.

At Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, there have been two COVID outbreaks.

The first one started awhile ago and affected two or three staff members on one ward, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said today. The other impacted patients in another ward who were in hospital for reasons other than COVID.

A news release from Interior Health today provided more details. It says that Unit 7N has four patients infected with COVID-19 while Unit 5S has 27 cases, including 20 patients and seven staff or others. There has been one death connected to the outbreak.

“They’re doing a detailed investigation to try and figure out where was the introduction and how it got transmitted between people,” Dr. Henry said. “But we are seeing that these outbreaks are not to the same degree as we saw a few months ago when we didn’t have this much vaccination.”

During the week of Oct. 31 to Nov. 6, there were 58 non-urgent scheduled surgeries cancelled in the Interior Health region out of 288 for the province as a whole, Dix said. He did not break out how many were at Kelowna General Hospital due to the operating room closures.

On Nov. 1, Dix reported that five per cent of workers in Interior Health facilities were unvaccinated.

READ MORE: Two operating rooms closed in Kelowna, surgeries postponed in Kamloops due to lack of COVID shots

That percentage remained the same today even though 1,548 vaccinated workers have been added to the health care system, he said.

What may make a difference to the number of workers who have refused to get vaccinated is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that’s expected to arrive in B.C., in limited amounts, late this week or early next week.

“We know that some health-care workers have said this is the only option they would consider right now,” Dr. Henry said.

That’s because it’s a single dose vaccine that is as effective as the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. It’s also a “viral vector” vaccine, which is different than the other two mNRA vaccines.

READ MORE: It's now up to employers to push vaccine rates up in Interior Health: health official

Dr. Henry did caution that the manufacturer has been approved to provide a second dose after six months in the U.S.

Dix stressed there is not going to be any relief in the mandatory vaccine mandate for health-care workers when he responded to a media question about a Port Alberni pediatrician who cannot work because he’s unvaccinated and thousands have signed a petition urging an exemption to the vaccine mandate.

“Other than medical exemptions, and there is a process for that, there are no exemptions,” Dix said. “The decision has been taken. It’s something that will be applied across the board. It’s obviously not desirable to lose anybody in any position in health care, least of which somebody who clearly has a lot of support locally. But the rules are going to apply to everybody and it’s going to apply here and I encourage everybody to get vaccinated because there is, of course, a much simpler answer to that.”

— This story was updated at 5:06 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021 to include more details about the outbreaks at Royal Inland Hospital.

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