B.C. Housing Minister backs Interior Health's decision not to declare COVID-19 outbreak at Kelowna shelter

B.C. Housing Minister David Ebyhas defended Interior Health's decision not to declare a COVID-19 outbreak in Kelowna's biggest homeless shelter.

The health authority came under firefor not issuingany public health notices about the outbreak that sweptthrough the 50-bed shelter of Kelowna's Gospel Mission for more than three weeksfrom late August to mid-September, during which a total of 21 people tested positive for COVID-19. All have since recovered.

The health authority, in a written statement to CBC, said a public notice on the incident "would have unnecessarily further stigmatized already marginalized individuals" and Eby agrees.

"Already it's incredibly difficult to get by when you have no place to live or you're living out of an emergency shelter," Eby told Chris Walker on CBC's Daybreak South. "What [Interior Health is] trying to avoid is that stigma and discrimination."

Interior Health wrote that since it had already declared an outbreak in the Central Okanagan, residents in the region were aware of COVID-19 cases being spreadinthe community, and a public notice on the shelter's COVID-19 outbreak would be unnecessary.

B.C. Liberal housing critic and Kelowna-WestMLA Ben Stewart argues that a public notice is still necessary to inform shelter workers of the health risk they're facing.

"I do think that the staff and the security that operate in and around these shelters need to be aware of more than just the risk, I think they need to know of the imminent danger," Stewart said on Daybreak South.

"I don't know how you avoid the [stigma], but I do think it's important that people have the information."

But Eby says that from the beginning of the pandemic, homeless shelter workers have been informedthat they should assume everybody they work with could test positive forCOVID-19.

"[Shelter workers] have been social distancing, they've been masking, they've been getting vaccinated, which is the way that you have to operate in these kinds of situations," Eby said.

LISTEN|David Eby defends Interior Health's decision not to declare COVID-19 outbreak at Kelowna shelter:

LISTEN|B.C. Liberal housing critic Ben Stewart on whyInterior Health should have declared an outbreak atKelowna shelter: