Death count continues to rise at Holy Family Hospital

The death toll at Vancouver’s Holy Family Hospital, one of two B.C. long-term care facilities with active COVID-19 outbreaks, has climbed to nine.

Vancouver Coastal Health first declared an outbreak at the 126-bed facility on June 9.

Since then, according to information posted to the Holy Family Hospital website, a total of 43 residents and 24 staff members have tested positive for COVID-19.

Long-term care facilities have been at the centre of the COVID-19 pandemic in British Columbia.

According to B.C. Centre for Disease Control statistics released Monday, 133 of the province’s 183 COVID-19 related deaths were residents at long-term or acute-care facilities.

It’s believed the latest death at Holy Family Hospital occurred sometime over the weekend.

On Tuesday, the provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, and Health Minister Adrian Dix announced that 12 more people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.

They did not report any additional deaths, so the provincial death toll remains at 183.

B.C. health officials say there are 162 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, and 2,645 people who tested positive have recovered. There are 16 people in hospital with the respiratory disease, four of them in intensive care.

“There have been no new health-care facility outbreaks and the outbreak at Tabor Home has now been declared over,” Henry and Dix said in a joint statement.

Along with Holy Family Hospital, health facility outbreaks remain active at Langley’s Maple Hill long-term care home and Mission Memorial Hospital.