A Vancouver Island First Nation currently under shelter-in-place orders has reported its fourth death due to COVID-19.
Cowichan Tribes confirmed Monday another person had died due to complications with the disease. The person’s identity, age and gender are not yet known.
Tribes members also said there are four members currently in intensive care units in hospital due to COVID-19.
It comes as Cowichan Tribes members received word that they would be waiting a little longer for their second vaccine doses.
Cowichan Tribes was due to administer another 661 doses of the Pfizer vaccine this week but received word over the weekend vaccinations would not occur for another two weeks.
“We planned and coordinated to roll out the second round today and for this week, and so that means we would have received the vaccine sometime last week and again that’s what we were being informed,” said Cowichan Tribes health director Derek Thompson.
“So the timeframe and our ability to receive those vaccines have shifted so we will be receiving them Wednesday,” he said.
Seventy-eight-year-old Cowichan Tribes Coun. Dora Wilson thought she would receive her second dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine within days, and now has to wait a further two weeks.
“I think we’re all waiting for it to be over,” said Wilson. “It’s getting pretty hard.”
Members of the tribes, the largest single band in B.C. with 4,900 people, have been living under a shelter-in-place order since early January to limit the spread of COVID-19.
In that time, four people have died due to the disease: The unidentified person, a 50-year-old and last week, two young adults.
Jeff Lawrence
Skye Ryan
