Interior Health’s Medical Health Officer for Kamloops says the health authority is on track to give all seniors in long term care homes in the Thompson-Cariboo-Shuswap their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by tomorrow.

Speaking on NL Newsday, Dr. Carol Fenton says they’ll be monitoring the situation at care homes across the health authority, irrespective of whether there is an active outbreak or not.

“The workers should be done, or the vast majority of them, and then residents were second. So by Wednesday, hopefully we should have all of our long term care populations covered off,” she said. “And then we are continuing to deliver the vaccine to the other groups in that first wave.”

One person has died at the Gemstone Care Centre in the Brocklehurst neighbourhood – the first care home death due to COVID-19 in Kamloops. Fenton says residents in that facility were vaccinated on Friday and Saturday.

“We’ll continue to follow the situation there very closely. We do follow COVID-19 outbreaks for two incubation periods, so 28 days, after the onset of the most recent case to make sure we are not missing anything,” Fenton added.

“So we’ll continue to follow closely but hopefully we won’t see any cases after that.”

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry noted yesterday it has been challenging to get the vaccine to the Northern, Interior and Island health regions.

And despite delays in getting the Pfizer vaccine, she notes the province is on track to complete the first doses of vaccinations in all care homes by the end of next week, noting though it will depend on when the vaccine doses arrive in the province.

Editors note – a previous version of the story indicated that all residents in long term care in Interior Health will be vaccinated by Jan. 20. Interior Health later clarified to say it all residents in long-term care homes in the Thompson-Cariboo-Shuswap will have received a vaccine dose by today, while it expects all care homes across the health authority to be done by the end of the month.