Manitoba considering shortening period of isolation as COVID-19 case climb hits critical services

WINNIPEG -

Manitoba is considering shortening the period of isolation for people who catch COVID-19 and their close contacts, the province’s chief public health officer said Wednesday.

It comes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States cut the recommended time asymptomatic people in that country who’ve tested positive should stay home from 10 days to five.

“We’re definitely looking at that, looking at reducing what we define as the isolation period both for people who test positive and also who are named as contacts,” Dr. Brent Roussin said in a media briefing. “We have the benefit of people getting out of isolation sooner … certainly alleviate some of the strain on some sectors by doing that.”

“The risk is we have some people who will still be infectious after that period.”

In addition to health-care workers and businesses, the surge of COVID-19 cases is taking a toll on services such as fire and ambulance where absences due to isolation have reached unprecedented rates.

“That’s had some impacts on our staff rosters with increased absences at higher rates than we’ve ever seen before,” said Christian Schmidt, Chief of the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service.

Schmidt said of the 1,385 WFPS members, 2.8 per cent—which is nearly 40 staff—are currently at some point in their isolation due to a COVID-19 infection.

He said the service has, for the most part, been able to backfill shifts in both fire and EMS operations except for Dec. 26 and Dec. 27 when three ambulances had to be pulled from service during the night shift.

“Our call volumes on those nights were actually below our average volumes, we did 175 calls and 153 calls on those nights respectively so there weren’t any service impacts as a result of that,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt said the fire paramedic service is aware of the CDC’s new recommendation in the U.S.

The CDC said the change is in line with growing evidence people who catch COVID-19 are most infectious two days before and three days after symptom onset.

Dr. Philippe Lagacé-Wiens, a medical microbiologist at St. Boniface Hospital, said while there is science in support of shortening the duration, he said it’s preliminary and considers such a move risky.

“It does appear more than anything an effort to keep workforces intact but it is taking some risk,” Lagacé-Wiens said. “They appear to be accepting more elevated risk of transmission in the community in exchange to be able to maintain that workforce. I’m not saying it’s the right decision to make, it’s accepting a certain risk.”

The Public Health Agency of Canada isn’t recommending any immediate changes.

Schmidt said the fire paramedic service’s medical director is also reviewing the U.S. guideline, but he said no changes will be made unless they fall in line with provincial public health guidance.

“I can assure you that the fire paramedic service isn’t going to be leading the charge on that,” Schmidt said. “We’ll be looking for recommendations from the appropriate authorities.”

He said staff have been answering the call over the holiday season to work overtime to fill vacant shifts. Schmidt said when that’s no longer an option, there are contingencies in place to keep this critical service functioning. That would mean temporarily shutting down certain units, those would be fire and ambulance units that have the lowest utilization rates.