WINNIPEG -- An internal review of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in one company’s long-term care homes in Ontario cites a lack of routine surveillance testing as one of several factors that allowed the virus to spread.
The review for the private company Revera was conducted by a panel of independent health-care experts and should serve as a guide to other provinces navigating the second wave of the pandemic, the report said.
It states COVID-19 exposed cracks within the long-term care sector which resulted in a series of system-wide breakdowns.
“Among these breakdowns was a sector-wide shortage of personal protective equipment to shield staff and residents from transmitting and contracting infection, along with a woeful lack of laboratory testing throughout the pandemic’s first wave to identify those who were infected,” the report states.
Revera said its expert advisory panel focused its analysis in Ontario because that’s where more than two-thirds of Revera’s 74 long-term care homes in Canada are located and where the most severe of the 87 outbreaks in the company’s care homes occurred during the first wave.
Dr. Bob Bell, a former deputy health minister and hospital CEO in Ontario who has also worked as a physician and surgeon, served as chairperson on the expert panel.
While the report made several recommendations for Revera, it was also critical of governments in other provinces, including Manitoba, for not making routine surveillance testing mandatory for care home staff.
“Realistically, long-term care residents don’t go out and bring the virus back into the long-term care home,” Bell said in an interview with CTV News Winnipeg. “It’s asymptomatic, well-meaning staff who live in areas where there’s high community spread of COVID. They’re the ones that bring the virus into long-term care.
“Ontario learned this back in May and June. We started doing surveillance testing, we started testing every long-term care staff member every two weeks. Recently, with the second wave in some areas that are more infected with community spread than others, that’s been increased to weekly.”
Bell said Revera and some other private care home companies are paying to have private labs do routine surveillance tests on staff.
On Monday, Dr. Brent Roussin, chief provincial public health officer, said Manitoba will be reviewing the Revera report.
Roussin said the province is already doing asymptomatic testing in personal care homes as part outbreak investigations.
“We do a lot of asymptomatic testing,” said Roussin. “We don’t have routine surveillance testing happening at this point.”
Roussin said Manitoba is focusing its testing resources right now on people at highest risk—those who are symptomatic or exposed to the virus during outbreaks.
The top doctor has previously said, and reiterated Monday more routine testing is in the works.
“We do have plans to start piloting more of a routine surveillance in certain settings like personal care homes. We’ll have more information on that when we can get that underway.”
Family members of residents who died or lived through outbreaks at Revera care homes in Winnipeg hope the review leads to change but some are questioning why the company and the government weren’t better prepared for the second wave in Manitoba.
“These are not testimonials that a business would want,” said Eddie Calisto Tavares, whose dad died in Revera’s Maples long-term care home after testing positive for COVID-19.
“If they needed more resources, they needed to make that business plan. They needed to have the people in place to be able to take care of the outbreak when the outbreak happened.”
So far, 52 Maples residents have died as a result of COVID-19.
Alvin Cadonic’s aunt and uncle also live at Maples and have both tested positive for the disease.
Cadonic hopes something happens with the recommendations to address the issues the pandemic has exposed in Manitoba’s care homes.
“What’s important is that they get fixed so that people aren’t continually put in harm’s way, that people aren’t put in danger.”
