New COVID-19 outbreak declared at Grace Villa as staff member tests positive
- Michael Kras
- 03 Feb 2021
With one new coronavirus case confirmed at Grace Villa, a second COVID-19 outbreak has been declared by local public health at the Hamilton Mountain long-term care facility.
The outbreak was officially declared on January 31st when a staff member at the facility tested positive for COVID-19, pushing Grace Villa back into outbreak just shy of two weeks after its original outbreak was declared over.
Grace Villa dealing with new #COVID19 outbreak after staff member tests positive | CBC News https://t.co/qvIrt65Avy #HamOnt
— CBC Hamilton (@CBCHamilton) February 1, 2021
While public health typically defines an outbreak as two or more lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases for which transmission likely occurred within that particular setting, an outbreak within a long-term care home only requires one confirmed case of COVID-19 in a staff member or resident.
Hamilton’s medical officer of health, Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, has expressed hopes that this single case – found in one staff member at the facility – will not spread further to other staff or residents.
Grace Villa made national news recently as the site of Hamilton’s largest and deadliest COVID-19 outbreak to date, resulting in a staggering 234 confirmed cases of the virus including 144 residents, 88 staff members, and two visitors.
Conditions became so dire that Grace Villa was notably the first long-term care facility for which a professional team from Hamilton Health Sciences had to be deployed on site to help manage the outbreak, which was officially declared over on January 19th with 44 total deaths confirmed.
Hope is strong that further spread of this newly-found COVID-19 case is able to be properly contained, and updates will be provided on the City of Hamilton website.
Lead image courtesy of Google Maps
Comments 0
There are no comments
Add comment