Families with loved ones in long-term care homes have been locked out for weeks as the facilities try to contain the coronavirus pandemic that has had a devastating toll on their residents. Yet new outbreaks continue to emerge, as staff members continue to work at multiple homes in some jurisdictions.
It was a tough lesson learned by the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver, the long-term care home in British Columbia that was the first — and is still among the hardest hit — by a coronavirus outbreak in Canada.
The facility that recorded the country’s first COVID-19 fatality has since seen 16 others die, and almost 80 staff and residents have been infected since the outbreak began in early March.
Officials now believe that the virus arrived at the home through a care worker with multiple employers.
Contact tracing — which involves tracking an infected person’s movements and identifying all their close contacts — showed that the Lynn Valley outbreak was linked to at least one other outbreak through a worker moving between multiple locations, according to Isobel Mackenzie, British Columbia’s seniors’ advocate.
“That care staff member worked at other facilities,” she said. “We saw some link between outbreaks … back at that point when we were doing the contact tracing.
“That’s what was revealed.”
Seniors homes across Canada have been devastated by COVID-19, with confirmed cases in at least 600 of the country’s facilities.
Families with loved ones in these long-term care homes have been locked out for weeks, with no one but staff coming or going, as the facilities try to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Yet new outbreaks continue to emerge.
B.C. restricts movement between homes
Soon after the outbreak at Lynn Valley, B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry issued an order requiring all care staff to work in only one home; part-time employees would be paid full-time wages to make up for not being able to work in multiple facilities.
Although the strategy has been slow to roll out provincewide, according to Mackenzie, it has been implemented in the areas hardest hit by the virus and will continue across the rest of B.C. in the coming weeks.
That decision was made based on evidence that “care staff were potentially carrying the virus from one care home to another,” said Mackenzie.
“I think it will really help us as we get through this pandemic.”
Recommendations — but no rules
And while Ontario seems to agree that a single-employer model would be safer amid the ongoing pandemic, it has stopped short of mandating such a move.
The provincial government issued guidance las