{"id":272692,"date":"2026-02-04T00:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T00:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/272692\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T00:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T00:27:09","slug":"third-covid-19-outbreak-declared-at-local-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/272692\/","title":{"rendered":"Third COVID-19 outbreak declared at local hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is the third unit at the hospital that has an outbreak of COVID-19\u00a0since Saturday<\/p>\n<p>Sault Area Hospital and Algoma Public Health declared another COVID-19 outbreak this morning\u00a0\u2013\u00a0this time on unit 3B.<\/p>\n<p>This is the third unit at the hospital that has a new\u00a0outbreak of COVID-19\u00a0since Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>The hospital said 3B &#8220;is a general medicine unit that provides care for patients with a variety of non-surgical medical conditions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are fewer than five confirmed cases associated with the outbreak on Unit 3B,&#8221; said Brandy Sharp Young, director of corporate affairs at the hospital.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To protect patient privacy, exact numbers are not shared when case counts are below a five-patient threshold.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Both unit 2C, which is\u00a0for post-acute complex continuing care, and 1B,\u00a0for post-acute transitional care, have also been impacted.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Hospital officials encourage the public to limit visits to the affected units while outbreaks remain active.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday the hospital said there were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sootoday.com\/local-news\/covid-19-case-counts-remain-low-at-local-hospital-11824629\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">less than five cases<\/a> of COVID-19 in each of the affected units.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVisitors and essential caregivers are to wear PPE when in a patient&#8217;s room where additional precautions have been added . . . signage will indicate additional precautions are in place,\u201d the hospital said on social media.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVisitors are to adhere to hand hygiene practices. Please reach out to your loved one&#8217;s care team if you have questions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you for your cooperation in keeping our hospital safe!\u201d the post said.<\/p>\n<p>For more details, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/sah.on.ca\/visitors\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">SAH Visitor Guidance.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a hospital setting an outbreak is declared based on the criteria outlined by the Provincial Infectious Diseases Advisory Committee on Infection Prevention and Control,\u201d Felicia Clement, the hospital\u2019s communications and digital services coordinator, told SooToday in October when there was a previous COVID-19 outbreak in 1B.<\/p>\n<p>PIDAC defines an outbreak as two or more patients testing positive for the same respiratory virus within a defined area, \u201cwith symptom onset occurring within a 48-hour period, and where at least two cases could reasonably have been acquired within the health-care setting,\u201d Clement said.<\/p>\n<p>SooToday\u00a0has reached out to the hospital for more information.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013\u00a0With files from Greg McGrath-Goudie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the third unit at the hospital that has an outbreak of COVID-19\u00a0since Saturday Sault Area Hospital&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46,141568],"class_list":["post-272692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sault-area-hospitalcovid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}