Interior Health says the COVID-19 outbreak at Royal Inland Hospital has grown to 66 cases – an increase of 15 cases from yesterday’s update.

There are now 43 staff and 23 patients that have been affected with 64 of the cases currently active. There is still one death – an elderly patient – connected to this outbreak at surgical unit 6 South and the COVID unit at 6 North with one case considered to have recovered.

During a press conference today, Chief Medical Health Officer, Dr. Albert de Villiers says all new patients at RIH will now be tested for COVID-19 as an added layer of protection.

“We know that there is increased spread in the area, so we want to make sure that as people come in that they are actually placed correctly and we don’t want to put people who are not COVID positive in the unit,” he said. We know its just the one unit so we wanted to make sure we keep people out of there.”

“Its not because we are expecting to find patients with or without symptoms and we are making sure we can keep it safe for people coming to the hospital.”

While there are 43 staff affected, Interior Health Vice President of Pandemic Response, Karen Bloemink says they’re managing to cover off shifts for now.

“We’re paying close attention to that going forward and we do have plans in place to bring staff in place from other areas if the need arises,” she said.

de Villiers meanwhile noted Interior Health is not aware of any community spread in Kamloops as a result of this outbreak.

“There are cases in all our communities. So we don’t necessarily look into where every single case came from – yes we don’t in the contact tracing and make sure they are isolated and their work place is protected and the school is protected,” he said.

“We might never know that answer but we haven’t seen any clear trend where people from the hospital spread it out back into the community.”

Yesterday, Kamloops Medical Health Officer, Dr. Carol Fenton said a vaccine clinic is underway in the hospital for staff in the emergency room, the Critical Care ward, and in the COVID ward. However with vaccines is short supply across the province, some doses have been diverted to Royal Inland Hospital from other regions of the province.

“As soon as there’s an outbreak we do meet locally and there’s also provincial meetings where we can quickly move vaccine around,” de Villiers said. “So yes, we have moved some vaccine in from Northern Health.”

It’s unclear exactly how many doses have been brought to RIH but reports indicate there are several hundred.

Meanwhile, the outbreak at the Gemstone Care Centre in Brocklehurst remains at 23 active cases – 16 residents and seven staff – with two deaths.