COVID-19 Action Plan for Protecting Long Term Care Home Taking Further Steps

Wednesday, 22 April 2020 17:25

The Province of Ontario has taken Immediate Steps to Further Protect Long-Term Care Residents and Staff During COVID-19 Outbreak.

ONTARIO - The Ontario Government is taking further steps in the COVID-19 Action Plan for Protecting Long Term Care Homes.

The Government has introduced more aggressive testing, screening and surveillance, deployed specialized teams from hospitals, public health and the home care sector, recruited additional frontline staff, and increased personal protective equipment.

Premier Doug Ford says since the Action Plan was announced, the government has worked swiftly and decisively to provide targeted, on-the-ground support to long-term care homes.

"Within 48 hours of launching our Action Plan, we sent in reinforcements to further protect our most vulnerable seniors and those who care for them in our long-term care homes. Today, we are making progress against this ruthless disease, but I want to emphasize that every option is on the table to get our long-term care homes what they need to stop the spread. That is why we intend to make a formal request for assistance from the federal government."

The Action Plan includes the following measures.

- Assisting 20 long-term care homes, which were previously experiencing outbreaks, to become now outbreak-free.

- Increasing testing on both symptomatic and asymptomatic staff and residents. To date, approximately 11,600 tests have been completed amongst residents in long-term care.

- Conducting additional testing of asymptomatic residents and staff outside of the testing guidance at 21 long-term care homes, to help understand the spread of the virus.

- Setting up a 24/7 Long-Term Care COVID-19 Response Team, which has already helped more than 30 homes by putting in place infection control protocols, resolving staffing issues, and fulfilling personal protective equipment needs.

- Launching 31 Infection Prevention and Control interventions, which are currently in progress, with six assessments already completed.

- Providing over 400 job matches for long-term care homes through the province's Health Workforce Matching Portal, with over half of Ontario's long-term care homes now using the portal.

- Continuing to identify critical 24-, 48-, and 72-hour help that homes need by ma tching qualified people and volunteers who can help with duties, including nursing support and cleaning.

- Responding to every escalated request for personal protective equipment from long-term care homes within 24 hours through the following measures:

* A four-step process is in place to ensure an optimized regional distribution and redistribution when supplies are urgently needed.
* Critical supply needs are escalated for provincial action.
* Daily distribution of supply from provincial warehouses to regional sites.
* Daily monitoring of and reporting against performance target of 100 per cent of critical need requests being shipped within 24 hours.

You can read more about the action plan online here.