The number of new COVID-19 cases in the Revelstoke Local Health Area has dropped to four new cases in the latest weekly period, down significantly from the previous weekly period when 22 new cases were recorded.
The latest period covers the week from Feb. 14–20. The weekly case counts since Interior Health started providing weekly numbers for Revelstoke are as follows:
Epi week 7: Feb. 14–20, 2021: 4 cases
Epi week 6: Feb. 7–13, 2021: 22 cases
Epi week 5: Jan 31–Feb 6, 2021: 19 cases
Epi week 4: Jan 24–30, 2021: 12 cases
Epi week 3: Jan 17–23, 2021: 2 cases
Epi week 2: Jan 10–16, 2021: 16
Epi week 1: Jan 3–9, 2021: 16
Epi week 53: Dec 27, 2020–Jan 2, 2021: 37 cases
Epi week 52: Dec 20–26, 2020: 22 cases
Epi week 51: Dec 13–19, 2020: 7 cases
Epi week 50: December 6–12, 2020: 1 case
Epi week 49: November 29–December 5, 2020: 7 cases
Health authorities do not provide the number of active case per local health area.
IH: In Revelstoke, home is where the COVID-19 transmissions are happening
In response to questions about recent school exposures in Revelstoke, Interior Health (IH) says the majority of COVID-19 transmissions in Revelstoke are happening in homes, or “primarily in residential settings,” as IH puts it, “especially those with larger numbers of household members.”
The response from IH came from our questions about the Arrow Heights Elementary School exposure notification incident.
In essence, IH says that school exposures originate with home exposures. Ongoing community transmission is happening in Revelstoke, driven by household transmission. Making the case that schools are safe, IH cited a provincial statistic provided by provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry in her Feb. 19 briefing, saying that, “90 per cent of school cases do not result in a second case.”
Detached homes make up the majority of Revelstoke housing stock, so with housing scarce and expensive, many adults live in shared homes, sometimes with many others. Co-living is common and diverse here and peaks in winter.
We reported on the challenges of shared home living in the article, Shared housing creates challenges during COVID-19 cluster. Several co-living adults working in environments with exposure potential leads to complex home situations.
Currently, IH says they are doing about 100 COVID-19 tests per week in Revelstoke.
Workplace transmissions follow next
The IH spokesperson listed workplace exposures in Revelstoke as a second area of concern: “We have also periodically seen transmission within work sites.”
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