Health units can respond faster than the province to protect long-term-care residents, minister says

With outbreaks of COVID-19 taking deeper and more deadly hold in nursing homes, the cabinet minister in charge is urging local medical officers of health to step in quickly with any “necessary” protections.

“Our measures take somewhat longer,” Long-Term Care Minister Merrilee Fullerton said Monday as the government reported 1,487 new cases in the wake of Premier Doug Ford’s warning Ontario is

Another 123 nursing home residents and 23 staff have been infected in the last two days in addition to deaths of 24 residents, including at a handful of . There are outbreaks in 107 of Ontario’s 626 nursing homes, an increase of six.

Fullerton’s comments, which came without specific advice for local health units, prompted criticism from NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and others, given there have been 250 nursing home deaths in the second wave of the pandemic this fall.

“She can’t pass the buck,” Horwath said, citing an “empty promise” from Ford earlier this year to put an “iron ring” of protection around nursing homes.

“It looks like she’s preparing to scapegoat the public health units.”

While the province has limited the number of visitors to nursing homes in general, and in hot spots is allowing only two designated “caregivers” in to see loved ones, Fullerton said local medical officers of health have more “tools to use” under the Health Protection and Promotion Act, such as banning visitors to keep potential infections out.

“In some cases, that is happening,” she told reporters after the legislature resumed sitting following a one-week break. She noted that 92 per cent of nursing homes have no COVID-19 cases among residents.

Liberal MPP Mitzie Hunter (Scarborough-Guildwood) said that was an attempt to minimize the dangers of the virus in the close confines of long-term care, where it spread rapidly last spring and has now killed more than 2,000 residents and eight staff since March.

“What you’re doing in hot spots is not working because people are dying,” Hunter said in the legislature’s question period.

Kennedy Lodge nursing home in Scarborough has had 30 residents die since an outbreak began Oct. 2, while has had seven dead, along with 136 residents and 65 staff infected. Both are getting assistance from hospitals in the Scarborough Health Network.

Fullerton acknowledged “testing isn’t perfect” for nursing-home employees because some are staff are unwittingly going to work infected, which can “wreak havoc” among vulnerable residents, and said new rapid testing kits coming soon will help that situation.

“It’s coming in through the staffers, it’s coming in through the visitors,” Ford told reporters, saying front-line health care staff need COVID-19 test results back within 24 hours, not “three or four days.”

It’s not clear why it is taking that long for staff to get test results because, most days, labs are processing tests at a level below their daily capacity of about 50,000.

Ford also announced the creation of an agency called Supply Ontario to provide centralized procurement and bulk purchasing of personal protective equipment and other supplies for the government and related agencies.

Monday’s tally of 1,487 new cases province-wide was almost 100 short of a record set Saturday, but nevertheless lifted the seven-day moving average of new cases to an all-time high of 1,443, almost double the level of a month ago.

“The trends are concerning,” said chief medical officer Dr. David Williams. Recommendations requested by Ford on the need for any new pandemic restrictions will come by week’s end, he added.

Just two of Ontario’s 34 public health units had no new cases, a sharp contrast with the 18 or 20 that would typically report no infections back in August, when Ontario went almost a week with fewer than 100 cases daily.

On average, every person who catches COVID-19 now is infecting another 1.2 people according to the effective reproduction rate.

Although more than one-third of Ontario’s hospitals did not report their latest statistics, Monday’s report from the Ministry of Health still showed the number of people requiring hospital care for the virus jumped by 21 to 500 patients.

There were 125 patients in intensive care, an increase of seven and a level not seen since June 3, and 70 of them on ventilators, up three. Just a week ago, there were 367 people in hospital with 84 in intensive care.

Provincial health officials warned last week that ICU numbers are due to surpass 150 within the next 10 days, pinching the ability of hospitals to perform non-emergency surgeries and other procedures.

Most of Ontario’s new cases were in the GTA, with 508 in Toronto, 392 in Peel, 170 in York, 45 in Durham and 46 in Halton.

Rob Ferguson is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: