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Deadly Tillsonburg hospital outbreak should be over this weekend: Officials

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After almost a month, officials at the Tillsonburg District Memorial Hospital are expecting to declare the active COVID-19 outbreak over this weekend.

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Sandy Jansen, president of the hospital, said 15 patients and five staff had been affected by the outbreak. As of Wednesday, just one positive case remained related to the outbreak while a recent round of testing turned up no new infections, she said.

The hospital underwent another round of testing on Thursday, Jansen said, and officials hope – in conjunction with public health officials – to declare the outbreak over on Saturday.

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The hospital closed admissions to three in-patient units on May 7, when the outbreak grew to include 10 patients. At that point, new admissions were being sent to Ingersoll’s Alexandra Hospital or Woodstock Hospital.

“As of the weekend, we were able to open two of three units and are starting to move patients back home to Tillsonburg,” she said.

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 Both the Woodstock and Ingersoll hospital had enough capacity to accept patients that would have otherwise been admitted in Tillsonburg during the outbreak, Jansen said. Patients also could have been sent to Simcoe if needed, but Jansen said that plan wasn’t needed.

The hospital had three deaths associated with the outbreak, which was officially declared May 5 when three patients tested positive.

About 62 per cent of the hospital’s staff have been vaccinated so far, Jansen said.

Jansen thanked the team at Southwestern public health, as well as the the staff and leadership at the Tillsonburg, Ingersoll and Woodstock hospitals, for stepping up during the outbreak.

“I want to thank … all our community partners and members for tireless and unending support of the team here at the hospital,” she said.

The outbreak at the Tillsonburg hospital is the only remaining active institutional outbreak in the Southwestern public health region.

An outbreak at Caressant Care’s Woodstock nursing home was declared resolved earlier this month, having affected 10 people. Since the second wave of the pandemic, there have been very few small outbreaks in local long-term care and retirement homes – evidence, said medical officer of health Dr. Joyce Lock, that early strategies of vaccinating at-risk seniors had paid off.

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