What is going on at McKinney Place?

And in the IHA? When deaths began to occur at McKinney why did the IHA not bring a mobile COVID-19 testing facility to Oliver? We all know that those 14 or 16 or now 21 care workers move about the community, and since we have only 2 grocery stores the chances are pretty good that people with the virus have been in our stores, touching the oranges, squeezing the lemons, picking up things, putting them back, whatever. Not their fault. They may not have known they were carrying the infection.

Oh, I know why we did not get a testing facility here. It was at Big White. A bunch of snow bunnies and snow buddies tested positive so wham…the mobile testing unit was right there. For days. Testing young healthy people. Could that be because the tourist dollars generated at Big White are more important than the lives of some old people–or the rest of us– in Oliver? Just guessing.

What is the administrator of McKinney Place doing? Never hear from that person. Oh. I just heard. We do not have an in situ administrator. Someone from somewhere else administers the facility. Well, administer might be a bit of a stretch. I do not think that letting people ‘die peacefully in their beds’ is really any level of administration. Apparently death by Covid is not usually peaceful. Some lucky people simply lose blood oxygen levels and go fairly peacefully. For the others, death is by suffocation. Not an easy or painless way out.

In any other health unit, if nearly 100 per cent of the residents of a care facility were infected and dying from COVID-19, there would have been a concerted provincial health response. Perhaps even the arrival of army med teams.

But again, on the local TV news, there was a short reference to Oliver’s McKinney Place, then a nice panoramic shot of skiers at Big White, and the happy assertion that COVID on the hill was contained.

Something is wrong here.

Jessica Murphy