Cases increase to 5 in Acropolis Manor’s 2nd outbreak

In the second COVID-19 outbreak at Acropolis Manor five residents in the west pod have tested lab-confirmed positive for the virus as of April 9, Northern Health stated in a late afternoon media release.

The further outbreak was declared on April 3, just more than two weeks after the all-clear came through regarding the first outbreak which was declared on Jan. 19 and resulted in 56 cases between residents and staff with 16 deaths.

Outbreak measures are in place and will continue at the long-term health care facility and seniors’ home.

Enhanced outbreak control measures remain in place at Prince Rupert Regional Hospital, on the Patient Care Unit where an outbreak was declared by medical health officers on March 28.

“To date, there have been three lab-confirmed cases among patients, and one staff case, in association with the outbreak,” Northern Health stated.

Monitoring and testing continue at both facilities, in order to identify any additional cases. Public health officials will only declare either outbreak over when they are confident that chains of transmission have been stopped, the health authority said.

As of the latest epidemiology information released by the BCCDC on April 7, there were 72 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Prince Rupert region for the week of March 28 to April 3 bringing the total number of cases to 764 since January.

There are currently 333 active cases in the Northern Health Region on April 11 according to the BCCDC dashboard, with 34 currently hospitalized. Twelve patients are in Critical Care in the health authority jurisdiction. There have been 6,442 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic in Northern Health with 109,540 across the province.