Northern Health declares COVID-19 outbreak at Prince Rupert Regional Hospital

See Update at bottom of page 

***** Original story *****

COVID-19 continues to cut a path across Prince Rupert, with Northern Health advising of an outbreak of the coronavirus at Prince Rupert Regional Hospital, with four patients listed as lab confirmed cases to date from the current outbreak.

As a result Northern Health has begun further monitoring and testing to determine if there are any additional cases at the facility.

As part of the advisory, Northern Health noted the following:

Enhanced outbreak control measures are in place at (PRRH). 

Northern Health Public Health is closely monitoring for additional cases, and the facility is taking steps to protect the health of staff and those they care for, with enhanced outbreak precautions such as (but not limited to): 

Increased frequency of cleaning and infection control measures 

Enhanced symptom monitoring among all staff and patients 

Limiting movement of staff and patients between care areas of the hospital 

Public health officials will be monitoring the situation carefully over coming weeks and will only declare the outbreak over when they are confident that chains of transmission have been stopped.

The full statement from Northern Health can be reviewed here.

Last week, the latest data release from the BC CDC indicated that the Prince Rupert area continued to have the largest volume of cases in the Northwest at 113 reported for the week of March 14-20, a decline from weeks previous, but still a number of  high  concern for the community.

Update: On Thursday, April 1, Northern Health advised that they had revised the number of patients identified as having tested positive for COVID, lowering that number to three.

For more notes from Northern Health see out archive pages here.