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<\/p>\n(March 31, 2020)<\/p>\n
By: Jim Moodie, Simcoe Reformer<\/p>\n
‘It\u2019s really obvious now that long-term care is the epicentre of the coronavirus in Canada’<\/p>\n
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Deaths will occur at local nursing homes unless more steps are taken to protect residents and staff from COVID-19, warns a local nurse and health-care advocate.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really obvious now that long-term care is the epicentre of the coronavirus in Canada because that\u2019s where the hot-spot cluster infections are going to happen \u2014 and are happening,\u201d said Dot Klein, an RN and head of the Sudbury chapter of the Ontario Health Coalition. \u201cWe\u2019ve got deaths in long-term care facilities in B.C. and of course now in Ontario, as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Seven residents succumbed to COVID-19 over the weekend at the Pinecrest Nursing Home in Bobcaygeon, while many staff tested positive and were placed in mandatory isolation. Outbreaks have also occurred at a dozen other long-term care facilities in the province, according to the health coalition.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s looking quite grave,\u201d said Klein, who worked herself in long-term care for 14 years and has been in regular contact of late with nurses and personal support workers at Sudbury nursing homes. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re scared,\u201d she said of the staff. \u201cThey know how vulnerable they are, but they also know how dedicated they are to their residents. They will go come hell or high water to look after them, but they also have families at home and they are burning out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Klein said the Ontario Health Coalition commissioned a study last year on a province-wide shortage of PSWs, but little has been done to improve the situation.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe had a round table in Sudbury in June, nine months ago, and the report was released in February this year, but nothing has really progressed,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lack of trust and PSWs are afraid to talk openly out of fear of reprisals.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Volunteers and nursing students shy of graduating have been enlisted to help during the pandemic, she said, but in many cases, they are not up to speed on everything they need to know and staff are becoming frayed and frustrated.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe new emergency act that Doug Ford has brought in surpasses any collective agreement, so their supervisor can come along and say, no, you\u2019re not going to look after the residents in this unit today, I need you for something else,\u201d said Klein. \u201cThey don\u2019t know who is looking after their residents, but they have to go, so they\u2019re really upset.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Klein said the biggest concerns for staff are a lack of personal protective equipment and insufficient testing for coronavirus. <\/span><\/p>\n In many cases workers will have no protection or only a paper mask to cover their face, which becomes useless, said Klein, as soon as it becomes damp from breathing.<\/span><\/p>\n While N95 respiratory masks are available, they are in short supply and a PSW working a night shift will not even have access to one, since they are kept locked away and approval is required first from a supervisor, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n Testing for the virus, meanwhile, is limited to those residents and staff members who exhibit obvious symptoms, said Klein, which overlooks many who might also be sick but just aren\u2019t showing evidence of the infection yet.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe know you may have it for six days or maybe more before you have any symptoms,\u201d said Klein. \u201cBut you can\u2019t wait a week, because it\u2019s likely that resident will have had contact with a number of front-line workers. Or if it is the PSW that is positive and has been coming into work, they could infect the whole home in no time at all, because they are being assigned all over.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In a release issued Tuesday, the health coalition said Ontario trails all provinces in testing for coronavirus, with only 334 per 100,000 people being swabbed. Alberta, by contrast, is testing three times as many residents, while five times as many are being tested in the Northwest Territories.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Ford government has said that the reason is a lack of reagents needed for testing,\u201d the coalition notes. \u201cBut Ontario not only lags in the number of tests per capita (which one might expect given the size of the population), our province has also done fewer tests in total than our nearest large province and is very close in total numbers to other large provinces that have much smaller populations. Which raises the question \u2014 if other provinces have enough reagents to do more tests, then why does Ontario not?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The national labour union CLAC also sounded the alarm on Tuesday, warning nursing homes will become vectors for COVID-19 unless more protective equipment is immediately supplied.<\/span><\/p>\n