Although the Wales Home and its long-term care facility were able to ride out the earlier stages of the COVID-19 pandemic with few-to-no positive cases of COVID-19, the establishment is now facing a widespread outbreak. According to Brendalee Piironen, the Executive Director of the home, close to one quarter of the residents in the home are now Covid-positive, and thirteen employees have contracted the virus since the beginning of the month.
“It’s a very, very contagious virus,” Piironen said noting that the situation has escalated rapidly since last Friday when there had been six confirmed cases among staff and 11 among residents.
The executive director said that so far symptoms among those residents who tested positive have been mild and comparable to a bad cold, something she attributed to the high level of vaccination in the home.
“Almost everyone in our facility received a second booster,” Piironen said, expressing relief that this outbreak did not come in an earlier wave of the pandemic when vaccination was not yet available.
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