Image Credit: Bylands Nurseries

By James Peters

COVID-19

West Kelowna COVID-19 outbreak over

May 11, 2020 | 11:37 AM

KELOWNA — One of the only COVID-19 outbreaks that cropped up within Interior Health (IH) has been declared over.

The outbreak at Bylands Nurseries in West Kelowna was first declared on March 28 when two migrant workers from Mexico tested positive.

IH told a cohort of 63 workers to quarantine that day. Eventually, 23 workers tested positive for COVID-19.

“The measures we implemented were self-isolation of the workers appropriately in housing that was appropriate for the needs that they had at the time, provisional food so that they didn’t have to go out and enhanced cleaning and disinfection measures,” said IH Medical Health Officer Dr. Silvina Mema.

In declaring the outbreak over Monday (May 11), Mema said 12 Canadian workers were also quarantined at the beginning of the outbreak, but the seven who were tested for COVID-19 all came back negative.

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“The source of this outbreak is unclear,” noted Mema. “We believe that some workers who came into Canada later during March may have been incubating the disease when they came in. This was before the provincial health officer order to quarantine anybody who was coming from abroad.”

Mema says there were no community cases related to the Bylands outbreak.