A coronavirus outbreak at a Port Coquitlam long-term care facility has been declared over, officially ending nearly six weeks of outbreak protocols and stemming the virus’s deadly toll.
The double outbreak at the Hawthorne Seniors Care Community — one in the facility’s long-term care facility and another in its assisted living unit — claimed the lives of four residents out of a total of 44 staff and residents who tested positive for COVID-19.
On Sunday, Dec. 6, Fraser Health had declared the assisted living outbreak snuffed out.
Without any more cases of COVID-19 at the seniors home, residents, family and staff can breathe a sigh of relief after weeks of isolation and heartache. And more good news is poised to arrive.
Health Canada approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine yesterday, making Canada the third country in the world to green-light a rigorously-tested COVID-19 vaccine after the United Kingdom and Bahrain.
With 249,000 doses expected by the end of December, four million doses by the end of March and with the option to buy 56 million more, seniors have been put at the top of the vaccination priority list in both B.C. and the rest of Canada.
Of the nearly 13,000 reported deaths due to COVID-19 in Canada, 74% are thought to have occurred in long-term care facilities, a number that drops to a still significant 45% in British Columbia, according to a tally kept by the National Institute on Ageing.
But the Pfizer vaccine must be stored at the ultra-low temperature of at least minus 70 degrees Celsius, and that’s necessitated its rollout at 14 centralized locations across Canada, including one in Fraser Health and one in Vancouver Coastal Health.
The first batches of the vaccine to arrive in B.C. will remain at centralized locations, putting health care workers — both from acute and long-term care — at the front of the line.
On Wednesday, Dec. 9, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said she was hopeful the logistics of cold chain delivery would be in place by January to bring the Pfizer vaccine directly to residents of the province’s seniors homes.
Until then, community transmission of the coronavirus continues across the province, and with Fraser Health at its epicentre, public health measures to stem its transmission will remain critical over the next several months, said Henry.
