Two operating rooms closed in Kelowna, surgeries postponed in Kamloops due to lack of COVID shots

Five per cent of health care workers in the Interior Health region have been put on unpaid leave because they’re not vaccinated against COVID-19.

That’s led to the closure of two operating rooms at Kelowna General Hospital and the postponement of non-emergency eye surgeries.

Those statistics were detailed in a news briefing by Health Minister Adrian Dix today, Nov. 1.

It’s expected that one of those operating rooms will re-open next week and the other should open the week after.

At Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, a number of surgical procedures have been postponed and replaced by day surgeries because of a shortage of vaccinated workers.

Dix did not provide numbers of surgeries postponed but said he will have that information on Thursday.

Hours of operation at the Keremeos health centre are also being adjusted.

In Interior Health, 1,018 employees who have worked at least one shift in the last three months were laid off last week because they are not vaccinated, Dix said. That’s out of 20,430 workers in the region and is the highest number and highest ratio of any health region. There were four per cent of workers in Northern Health put on leave and two per cent in the province's three other health regions.

There were 587 people put on leave in the Fraser Health region, 478 in Vancouver Coastal, 480 on Vancouver Island and 320 in the Northern Health region for a total of 3,325 workers. Another 2,064 only have one vaccine dose.

“Some people are quite dogmatically against vaccination, which is unfortunate,” Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said in answer to a question about what is wrong in Interior Health because of its high rate of unvaccinated workers.

She explained that the health care workers are a reflection of their communities and there are areas of the Interior Health region where vaccination rates are far too low.

At this point, Dix said, there is no need to transfer health care workers into the Interior Health region to fill in.

Dozens of patients had to be transferred from the Northern Health region to the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island in recent weeks because of a lack of capacity in the north. There’s no indication that will be needed in Interior Health.

Further clarification of provincial health orders on things like food and beverage services and regulated health care professionals working in the community will come out later in the week.

Dr. Henry also noted that the AstraZeneca vaccine does not offer the same level of protection as other vaccines so people who only received AstraZeneca vaccines will be offered booster doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines ahead of others in their age cohorts.

READ MORE: All B.C. residents will be able to get COVID booster shots

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