Premier Ford Announces Enhanced Action Plan to Combat COVID-19 at Long Term Care Homes

Tuesday, 14 April 2020 15:03

Premier Ford announced a new action plan to fight COVID-19 at Long Term Care Homes. He also confirmed the Emergency order has been extended to May 12th, guaranteeing students will not be returning to class on May 4th.

ONTARIO - Premier Doug Ford announced today they will be launching an enhanced action plan to fight COVID-19 at our Long Term Care Homes.

Ford says we are in the fight of our lives right now and the sad truth is our Long Term Care Homes are quickly turning into the front line of the fight against this virus.

"Our plan will include more support and more resources, we will spare no expense to protect our most vulnerable, we must re-deploy every available resource to our long term care homes right now, it is absolutely critical."

We will have more information about about the action plan at Long Term Care Homes tomorrow. Ford says people are dying and his heart breaks for anyone who has lost a loved one at a long term care home.

"Thanks to our collective efforts, we have not seen the surge in our hospitals that we were so worried about, as a result we have capacity within the health sector and I want available resources from our health system to be re-deployed to those homes when there is a serious outbreak. We need to get hospital based care teams, to help long term care staff manage these outbreaks and I want to see specialized teams deployed into long term care homes when there is a serious outbreak. This is something that our officials are working on right now and tonight we will issue a new emergency order that will ensure that every employee in these long term care homes can only work in one home."

Ford also discussed the Emergency order being extended for another 28 days, which will take us to May 12th. He also confirmed this means schools will not return on May 4th.

"School will not be going back on May 4th and the Minister will be talking further on this in the next couple of days but just to confirm, students will not be returning on May 4th, that does not mean that the year is cancelled, the Minister of Education will be talking more about that in the next couple of days."

You can find a complete list of every item included in the mandatory emergency order online here.