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The quick read: Interior Health has declared an Influenza A outbreak at Spring Valley Long-Term Care in Kelowna, affecting the entire facility. The outbreak was declared November 3. Visitors should check with the home before visiting, and anyone feeling unwell should stay away — flu season has arrived, and the people most at risk are the ones in care.

Flu season has arrived in Kelowna, and it has walked straight into one of the places it can do the most harm.

Interior Health has declared an Influenza A outbreak at Spring Valley Long-Term Care in Kelowna, affecting the entire facility.

The outbreak was declared on November 3, according to Interior Health's official outbreaks list.

What an outbreak declaration means

When Interior Health declares an outbreak in a long-term care home, the facility goes into outbreak protocols: extra infection control, monitoring of residents for symptoms, and restrictions on visiting and movement inside the home.

The goal is simple: keep a virus that is a bad week for a healthy adult from becoming a life-threatening illness for a frail senior.

Spring Valley is not the only facility on Interior Health's list, and it will not be the last this season.

Respiratory outbreaks sweep through care homes every winter, and they are the reason flu season is not a joke to anyone with a parent or grandparent in care.

What to do

If you have a loved one at Spring Valley, check with the home before visiting.

And the common-sense rule applies everywhere this winter: if you are feeling unwell, stay home.

That is not overreaction.

It is the cheapest, simplest protection available for the people in our community who cannot protect themselves, and it costs nothing but a little patience.

A flu shot is worth getting, too, if you have not had one yet this season.

The outbreak at Spring Valley will run its course and the home will come off the list when it is over.

Until then, the people inside deserve the one thing the rest of us can actually give them: a little distance while they recover.

Sources: Interior Health, Health Facility Disease Outbreaks list; Castanet, November 2026.