Province to allow limited indoor visits at PCHs By: Carol Sanders and Larry Kusch Posted: 1:02 PM CDT Monday, Jun. 22, 2020 Last Modified: 6:11 AM CDT Tuesday, Jun. 23, 2020 Updates

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For the first time in more than three months, residents of personal care homes Tuesday will be able to visit with a loved one in the comfort of the great indoors.

“We’re taking this step because the evidence supports it,” Health Minister Cameron Friesen told a conference call with reporters Monday. And to make sure visits won’t be halted when fall flu season hits, the province plans to have semi-permanent, all-season visitation shelters in place, adjacent to all 127 personal care homes by October.

“The creation of outdoor semi-permanent shelters will ease the stress a lot of people are feeling.” Personal care home residents being cut off from their loved ones has taken a toll, he said. “It had a real, undeniable effect… Maintaining those connections is ceontral to their well-being, and central to their mental health,” said Friesen.

On March 17, five days after the first COVID-19 case was detected in Manitoba, the province banned visits to long-term care homes to protect residents who are the most vulnerable to the virus. It began screening workers before each shift. On May 1, it limited the movement of staff between facilities, with a “one worker, one personal care home” rule to avoid spread of the virus. Manitobans obeyed public health orders, which also had an undeniable effect.

In Canada, about 80 per cent of all COVID-19 deaths have been linked to those living in personal care homes, but there has not been a single outbreak at a care home in Manitoba.

Now that Manitobans have prevented the spread of the virus and there are few cases, it’s safer now for care home residents to have visitors, officials said. Starting Tuesday, residents may have one designated visitor at a designated time. Each visitor is screened for COVID-19 and asked if they’ve recently travelled outside the province and whether they’ve had contact with anyone who has contracted coronavirus. They must wear a non-medical mask.

The visits could be curtailed if the province’s COVID-19 numbers go up sharply, Friesen cautioned.

“If we see that the numbers are rising we may curtail those (visits) right across the province or we could take a more localized approach, a site-by-site approach,” he said.

“This is not a return to normal,” said Lanette Siragusa, Shared Health chief nursing officer. “This is a high-risk population,” and personal care homes want to make sure residents are protected during visits, she said.

“A lot of work went on behind the scenes to make it as safe as possible,” said Siragusa.

Staff at the homes have had a refresher course on outbreak protocols and visitor screening questions have been updated. Inspections of care homes that were suspended in March are resuming, she said.

Friesen also announced Monday that the province is requesting proposals for safety and capital upgrades at personal care homes to make sure fire safety and emergency systems are up to code, including: sprinkler protection, fire alarm voice communication systems, carbon monoxide detection, emergency lighting, infection control measures, and planning for moving vulnerable residents.

The plan to have semi-permanent visitation shelters in place by October will allow residents to maintain that connection with loved ones if indoor visits at care homes have to be halted again during the regular flu season, chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said.

“We’re planning for the fall, expecting again the typical viral season,” Roussin said during Monday’s COVID-19 briefing. “We need to put some plans in place now so we don’t have to so rigidly restrict visiting rules,” he said.

“It’s trying to be proactive,” said Siragusa.

“We know every year that PCHs will have to go on outbreak protocols because of the flu,” she said. “We anticipate this is going to be a short window of indoor visits.”

Manitoba was one of the first provinces to allow outdoor visits at personal care homes, Friesen said, but that option has its limits. “It’s easier to accommodate in June or July than it is in November or February. That’s part of our thinking,” he said, referring to the long-term need for indoor visits, and the plan to have shelters adjacent to care homes in place this September.

“Now is the time to be doing this work — not when the fall happens,” said Friesen. “We should not anticipate somehow that we are going to be through COVID-19 and things are going to be back to normal by fall and winter.”

The province is looking for ideas, said the health minister, who gave a portable classroom as an example. The space needs to be wheelchair-accessible with proper heating, cooling, ventilation, easily cleaned and spacious enough for quality visits, he said. The province wasn’t announcing specifications or how much it’s planning to spend yet, he said.

“We should not anticipate somehow that we are going to be through COVID-19 and things are going to be back to normal by fall and winter.”- Health Minister Cameron Friesen

“We are going to be flexible in this,” he said. A personal care home could identify a possible secondary solution such as a space within the facility that meets the criteria, he said. A personal care home with a large number of residents may need more than one semi-permanent shelter, he said.

Manitobans with ideas are invited to go to http://Engagemb.ca to offer their input.

Uzoma Asagwara, the Manitoba NDP’s health critic, noted the “intense pressure” staff at personal care homes are under and said the province has not done enough to provide adequate staffing.

“(Personal care homes) in Manitoba are already critically understaffed after years of Pallister’s cuts, and it’s residents’ care that suffers,” Asagwara said. “But the Pallister government has done nothing to hire more staff in our personal care homes. Instead they have ignored calls to increase the number of direct care hours residents receive per day by hiring more nurses and they have blocked our bill which would have forced government to guarantee a minimum standard of care. The province must do more to keep long-term care facilities safe and it must start by hiring more nurses, aides and allied staff so residents and the workers who care for them are safe and visits with loved ones are able to be scheduled as desired.”carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca