Covid outbreak at Cottonwoods Care Home in Kelowna deemed to be under control.

(KATHY MICHAELS / iNFOnews.ca)

The COVID-19 outbreak at the Cottonwoods Care Home in Kelowna is in its fourth month but health officials are confident that it’s now under control.

It was first declared on Aug. 4 as case rates started to climb in the Central Okanagan and has now infected 70 residents, 15 staff members and claimed 17 lives.

“The short stay unit was impacted, then we were able to contain it, now, to just one unit in all of Cottonwoods,” Interior Health Medical Health Officer Dr. Silvina Mema told iNFOnews.ca today, Nov. 2. “That means it’s under control.”

Cottonwoods has 161 long term care beds, many of which are in four-bed rooms, but also 60 short term beds where people come from hospital or the community for rehabilitation or other intensive care before either being released back into the community or becoming longer term residents.

That transience in the short term care unit may have been where the outbreak started or it could have been brought in by one or more staff members, Dr. Mema said. She did not have the details at her fingertips.

That was when the fourth wave of COVID was starting and it was particularly virulent in the Central Okanagan. There was no mandatory vaccination requirement for staff at that time.

The long term care residents were among the first in the region to be vaccinated when vaccines became available last winter and are now in line for booster shots, Dr. Mema said.

“There were a number of people moved into the facility that were not yet vaccinated and the staff were not at a high enough level as well,” Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said during a news briefing Monday. ”So, that has been a very challenging outbreak.”

This is the second outbreak at the facility. One was declared on March 7. By the time it was over in May, there had been 26 residents and three staff members infected and two deaths.

Cottonwoods was first opened in 1976 and Interior Health is planning to replace it but there is no word on when that might happen.

READ MORE: Plans are underway to replace Kelowna’s Cottonwoods Care Centre

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