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Media Contacts

Ministry of Health

Communications
250 952-1887 (media line)

Backgrounders

Assisted-living, long-term care homes, seniors’ rental buildings with ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks

Vancouver Coastal Health – eight facilities

  • Banfield Pavilion
  • Haro Park Centre (second occurrence)
  • Lakeview Care Centre
  • Louis Brier Home & Hospital
  • Pinegrove Place
  • Royal Arch Masonic Home (second occurrence)
  • Three Links Care Centre
  • Yaletown House

Fraser Health – 25 facilities

  • Agassiz Seniors Community
  • Amenida Seniors Community
  • Belvedere Care Centre
  • Dania Home (second occurrence)
  • Chartwell Langley Gardens (second occurrence)
  • Evergreen Baptist Care Society
  • Fellburn Care Centre
  • Finnish Manor
  • Fort Langley Seniors Community
  • Good Samaritan Delta View Care Centre
  • Harrison Pointe
  • Holyrood Manor
  • Laurel Place
  • Hawthorne Seniors Care Community – long-term care
  • Hawthorne Senior Care Community – assisted living
  • Normanna (second occurrence)
  • Northcrest Care Centre
  • Peace Portal Seniors Village (second occurrence)
  • Rosemary Heights Seniors Village
  • St. Michael’s Centre
  • Suncreek Village
  • Tabor Home (second occurrence)
  • The Harrison at Elim Village (second occurrence)
  • The Residence in Mission
  • White Rock Senior Village (second occurrence)

Northern Health – one facility

  • Rotary Manor Dawson Creek

Interior Health – one facility

  • Village at Mill Creek
Surgical renewal commitment: weekly update

From March 16 to May 17, 2020, non-urgent surgeries — surgeries that have a target wait time of greater than six weeks — were postponed as part of the initial COVID-19 pandemic response. Urgent and emergency surgeries continued to be performed during this period.

On May 7, health authorities began calling all patients waiting for surgery to confirm that they were ready, willing and able to proceed with their surgery in a COVID-19 environment. To date, 107,789 patients have been contacted about their surgery.

Five of the six health authorities have completed all their calls to patients on the waitlist prior to May 7, 2020, with Island Health expecting to complete this work in the coming weeks.

Health authorities resumed non-urgent surgeries on May 18 and have completed a combined total of 159,634 surgeries as of Nov. 8, 2020. Of these, 124,078 were urgent and non-urgent scheduled surgeries, and 35,556 were unscheduled or emergency surgeries.

Total surgeries completed by health authority since May 18:

  • 43,794 in Fraser Health;
  • 29,204 in Interior Health;
  • 9,277 in Northern Health;
  • 37,573 in Vancouver Coastal Health;
  • 33,312 in Vancouver Island Health; and
  • 6,474 in the Provincial Health Services Authority.

Weekly total surgeries completed from Oct. 26 to Nov. 1:

Last week, health authorities reported 6,894 surgeries completed. Health authorities have now verified their data and the total number of surgeries completed was 7,179.

Weekly total surgeries completed from Nov. 2 to 8:

This week, health authorities completed 6,978 surgeries.

Contact-tracing hiring: weekly update

Snapshot of progress:

Health authorities continue to work through the significant number of interested contact-tracing job candidates. It is expected that these will be reflected in hiring numbers next week. Across all health authority roles:

  • 299 candidates are in the interview stage
  • 77 candidates are in the offer process

There also continues to be interest in the contact-tracing positions, primarily through health authority mechanisms.

In total:

  • 8,748 individuals have expressed interest in total, with 2,121 individuals expressing interest to Health Match BC (HMBC) and 6,627 expressing interest directly to health authorities. 
    • In the past week, 327 people have expressed interest.
  • HMBC has referred 1,341 individuals to regional health authorities and the Provincial Health Services Authority as appropriate.
    • In the past week, 56 positions have been filled across all health authorities.
  • To date, there have been 636 total hires. This surpasses the initial target (500 first announced in August) and represents 95.3% of the increased target of 608 positions (updated in September).
  • In the past week, several health authorities have received approval to increase the total number of contact tracers to approximately 800 positions.
  • In addition, the ministry has provided approval to the First Nations Health Authority to hire 76 community health representative positions to support culturally safe contact-tracing efforts within First Nations communities.