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A COVID-19 outbreak at the Evergreen House long-term care facility in North Vancouver that killed at least one elderly resident is over, three weeks after it officially began.
The outbreak was declared over by Vancouver Coast Health Feb. 8.
The outbreak, so far the only one announced for a care home on the North Shore during the Omicron surge of the virus, was officially declared Jan. 20, although both family members and staff at the facility indicated multiple residents had been infected with the virus in the weeks leading up to that.
The issue of care home outbreaks is complicated because there are no longer any province-wide standards for when a care home is considered to be in a COVID-19 outbreak. Those are now solely at the discretion of a local medical health officer.
As of Monday, Feb. 14, there were 39 declared outbreaks ongoing at long-term care facilities around the province.
40 % of deaths in care home outbreaks
Dr. Bonnie Henry, the province’s medical health officer, said recently about 40 per cent of those who’ve died of Omicron in the past month have been elderly residents of long-term care homes. Most of those dying outside of outbreaks have also been older people with underlying illnesses, said Henry.
26 people with COVID-19 in LGH
Hospitalizations are starting to decline but remain high. As of Tuesday morning (Feb. 15) there were 26 people in Lions Gate Hospital with COVID-19, four of them in ICU, according to Vancouver Coastal Health.
PCR tests point to falling COVID numbers
Meanwhile, limited data available continues to point to a decline in cases on the North Shore. According to B.C.'s Centre for Disease Control, the number of new cases reported by official PCR tests on the North Shore was 148 between Feb. 4 – 10. Of those, 118 cases were in North Vancouver and 31 were in West Vancouver. PCR testing is not available to most people and so is considered only a small subset of the actual numbers of COVID infections. Those numbers, however, have declined significantly since a high of more than 900 cases in the first week of January.
Sewage water samples show viral concentrations falling on North Shore
Viral concentrations detected in sewage going into the Lions Gate Wastewater Treatment plant on the North Shore have also been steadily decreasing since peaking in the first week of January at 333,000 parts per litre. The latest concentrations on Feb. 7 were about 67,500 parts per litre.
