VANCOUVER -- More than 46,000 workers in long-term care and assisted living facilities in B.C. have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to B.C.'s Ministry of Health.
The ministry provided the numbers in response to a request from CTV News Vancouver for a site-by-site breakdown of vaccination rates among care home staff similar to what it produced for residents of such facilities in mid-February.
At that time, 91 per cent of all long-term care residents in the province and 95 per cent of all assisted-living residents had received at least a first dose. Vaccination rates varied by health authority and within individual facilities, however.
The data provided to CTV News this week does not include breakdowns of staff vaccination rates by health authority or by individual facility.
CTV News has asked repeatedly for such a breakdown or for an explanation for why such a breakdown is not available. So far, the ministry has not provided such an explanation.
In March, Interior Health revealed that roughly 65 per cent of staff at Cottonwoods Care Home in Kelowna had been vaccinated when an outbreak started at the facility.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry initially described the lower-than-desired vaccination rate at the facility as a product of vaccine hesitancy among staff. The health authority, which owns and operates the care home, later clarified that there were a variety of reasons why workers at the facility had not been vaccinated, including scheduling conflicts.
As of April 21, a total of 26 residents and three staff members at the facility had tested positive for COVID-19 during the outbreak. One resident has died.
The vaccination rate among residents at Cottonwoods was 82 per cent as of Feb. 15.
Staff vaccination rates at other facilities with ongoing coronavirus outbreaks have not been made available.
According to the Ministry of Health, 40,226 workers in long-term care homes in B.C. had received a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine as of April 15. Of those, 26,396 had also received a second dose.
In assisted-living facilities, 6,147 staff members had received a first dose and 2,683 had received a second as of April 15, according to the ministry's numbers.
Those totals exceed the targets the province set for vaccinations in care home settings. The ministry said it was aiming to vaccinate 39,000 workers in long-term care and 5,000 in assisted-living.
"The target number is estimated numbers of people that work in these settings," the ministry said in an email to CTV News. "Staff turnover is largely responsible for vaccinations in excess of 100 per cent."
The ministry's targets are notably lower than the total number of care home workers who were subject to the province's single-site staffing order at the start of the pandemic.
In an update in June 2020, Health Minister Adrian Dix told reporters there were 48,794 employees across all of B.C.'s long-term care and assisted-living facilities. More than 8,000 of those workers were employed at more than one facility when the pandemic began. The single-site order restricted them to a single facility, with the goal of reducing the risk of COVID-19 spreading between care homes.
CTV News has asked the ministry for clarification on the reason for the discrepancy between Dix's number and the vaccination target number, but has so far not received a response.
If Dix's number, rather than the target, is correct, then the 46,373 first-doses administered to care home workers represent roughly 95 per cent of the entire care home workforce.
The ministry says it has completed its COVID-19 immunization program in long-term care and assisted-living facilities, but admits that there may be people who were not vaccinated during the rollout.
"Anyone who missed an outreach clinic and was unable to be vaccinated is now being invited to book an appointment at one of the general population clinics," the ministry said.
