CBC News is reporting that an Ontario seniors’ nursing home where 27 persons connected to the facility have died from COVID-19 over the past two weeks did not separate healthy and sick patients until well after the crisis began.
The outbreak at the Pinecrest Nursing Home in Bobcaygeon, about 150 kilometres northeast of Toronto, has drawn nation-wide attention and is considered one of the worst in the country--a county that has seen seniors’ nursing homes and long-term facilities hit especially hard.
Three more residents died over the weekend and 24 staff members have tested positive for the virus.
Twenty-six of those who have died were residents; the 27th was a volunteer.
The facility normally houses 65 residents.
Deaths from COVID-19 now number 27 persons at Pinecrest. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Now, CBC News reporters Mark Gollam and Ellen Mauro write in a story published today that Pinecrest administrator Mary Carr sent an email on April 3 to staff and to members of residents’ families stating the facility had implemented changes in the previous three days.
The changes, Gollam and Mauro write, included moving all the residents who were ill to one section of the home to distance them from healthy residents and mitigate any potential spread of the virus.
By April 3, the date of the email–and two weeks after the outbreak began–16 people had died.
A hearse leaves with another casualty of COVID-19 at Pinecrest Nursing Home in Bobcaygeon, Ontario on Tuesday March 31.. The virus has now claimed the lives of more than a third of the residents at the facility. (Fred Thornhill/The Canadian Press)
Gollam and Mauro write that space constraints hampered relocation efforts because private rooms only became available after some of the residents with COVID-19 died.
“That’s the reason why we actually have the space now. Because we’ve lost … residents,” Sarah Gardiner, a nurse who has worked at Pinecrest for 12 years, told CBC News.
“But before, there really was not the space to do that. It would have been an impossibility, I think.” Gardiner said.
Gardiner told the CBC News reporters that she doubted that implementing stronger infection control measures earlier would have made much difference because of the logistical issues of trying to move healthy residents.
“Because of the layout of our home and the way it’s set up, that would have been really difficult to facilitate that many changes when we had that many people living there, because we were full when this started,” Gardiner said.
Pinecrest has a mix of private, semi-private and ward rooms — four people to a room.
Before the new infection control measures were implemented,Gardiner said, patients who were healthy could have been sharing a room with patients who were sick “with only curtains in between to provide isolation,” Gardiner said.
“That was an untenable situation.”
With files from CBC News (Mark Gollam, Ellen Mauro), RCI
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