A COVID-19 outbreak has been declared on the fifth floor of the Joseph & Rosalie Segal Family Health Centre (Segal Centre) at Vancouver General Hospital after two clients tested positive for COVID-19.
The unit is closed to new admissions and transfers at this time. All non-essential visits to the Segal Centre have been suspended until the outbreak measures have been lifted; the exception being for compassionate visits at the end of life.
Vancouver Coastal Health has immediately implemented strict infection prevention and control protocols to prevent further transmission of COVID-19. These include:
Careful monitoring of patients, staff and physicians
Enhanced cleaning and disinfection of all high-touch surfaces
Closing the units to patient admissions and transfers
Cohorting of staff to the affected areas
Self-monitoring or self-isolation of staff/physicians as part of Public Health contact tracing
Suspension of visitors to the unit (with exemptions for end-of-life situations)
The masks are being produced by 3M Canada following a multimillion-dollar deal between Ottawa and Queen's Park announced last August by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
A joint statement from provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix says 946,096 doses of the three vaccines have been administered, and of those, more than 87,000 were second doses.
Police say a review of each incident allowed investigators to determine the four stops were carried out by a traffic enforcement officer who was on duty, dressed in uniform and operating an unmarked SUV.
Sarah Otto, a University of British Columbia professor who has done COVID-19 modelling, said the province's reliance on time-consuming whole-genome sequencing to confirm variant cases is not necessary.
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