Not far from the country’s largest airport near Toronto, a Peel Region hotel has been converted into an isolation centre for anyone exposed to COVID-19, including those confirmed to be infected.
Almost anyone is eligible to stay — free of charge — with one big exception. This quarantine facility isn’t for returning travellers.
“We’re hoping to fill the place,” said Leslie Moreau, who runs three other hotel sites in Brampton and Mississauga, now giving the region a total isolation capacity of 373 rooms.
While the federal government ramps up a requirement for inbound travellers to stay at least three days in a hotel, at their own expense, Peel Region has been scaling up its own local isolation operation, opening three hotel sites in just over a month. The fourth started accepting people on Monday.
The area has consistently had one of the country’s highest rates of COVID-19 infections. Public health authorities point to a concentration of health and long-term care workers, as well as communal work settings like e-retailing warehouses and manufacturing, as contributors to the spread of the virus in the community.
Peel also has a significant number of large multigenerational households, where elderly grandparents may live alongside working parents and school-age grandchildren.
“It’s very hard to safely isolate,” said Moreau of Peel’s multigenerational homes, “so if they’re here [at the hotel] in their own room, then it’s safer and we’re going to be able to control the spread.”
Persuading the skeptical to leave home to isolate
Though the region has requested that the exact location of the hotels not be revealed publicly, the four sites are located in East Brampton, South Brampton, North Mississauga and now, South Mississauga.
The cost to rent and staff the hotels is paid for entirely with emergency money from the federal and provincial governments. As a result, guests requiring isolation pay nothing for their stay.
Rebekah Brant Garcia, with the Salvation Army, lays out a meal package on Feb. 1 ahead of the arrival of guests at a hotel converted into a voluntary COVID-19 isolation facility near Pearson Airport. Peel Region started the initiative to help reduce community spread of the coronavirus, particularly in multigenerational homes that are common in the area. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
With transportation to the facility available in a specially sealed mini-bus, 24-hour on-site nursing staff, temperature checks, security, and meals delivered right to the door, Peel Region is trying to remove any inconvenience, fear or stigma from the isolation process.
“Racialized Canadians are most impacted by COVID-19. It requires a nuanced approach,” notes nurse Ameek Singh.
“To hear a common language … their anxiety goes way down. It starts not only with us as the health care providers here, but the food that’s offered, the facilities that are offered, and the cultural norms that are understood.”
Nurse Ameek Singh, part of a group of health care and hospitality workers, prepares a room for the arrival of a guest at a hotel converted into a voluntary COVID-19 isolation facility in Peel Region on Feb. 1. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Families are, for instance, able to drop off food or other supplies should a guest ask for anything. Menu options offer everything from hamburgers to vegetarian biryani, and mild jerk chicken to fish tandoori.
The catch, of course, is the isolation. By checking in, a guest is agreeing to stay inside their room with rare opportunities to go outside, and they can’t mingle with others or see anyone other than staff. Guests are forbidden. Even for those who remain asymptomatic, cable TV and wifi only stave off boredom to a certain degree.
Others who come to an isolation hotel will also be COVID-positive, and could become very ill during their time there. Those who test positive are kept on a separate floor, and nursing staff conduct regular health checks to ensure wellbeing. Anyone needing hospitalization is offered transfer by ambulance.
The keys to the success of the program are twofold — persuading people of the benefits of isolation outside their homes, and timing.
Health authorities want those potentially exposed to COVID-19 to come here immediately, rather than returning home or to a workplace where the risk of transmission jumps.
Guests at Peel Region’s isolation hotel are offered menu options ranging from hamburgers to vegetarian biryani. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Having restricted who could access an isolation hotel earlier in the pandemic, the criteria has recently been loosened in the hopes more will use the service. Anyone who learns of a potential exposure through public health, or contacts them directly, is now told of the isolation hotel if they report not having a suitable place to quarantine apart from others.
“We’ve done a lot of work in the past week … getting out to assessment centres,” said Moreau, Peel’s manager of Human Services.
“What we really want is people to come here when they’re looking to book a COVID test, not once they’re already positive. So we would like to get them here sooner rather than later.”
Isolation hotels similar to what incoming travellers will soon face
While guests are strongly encouraged to stay for their entire 14-day quarantine period, this is not an obligation at the Peel Region facility and the other three isolation hotels in the area.
That is not the case at another hotel in Mississauga operated by the Public Health Agency of Canada, which may serve as the model for the mandated isolation period that returning or arriving international travellers could soon face.
On Jan. 28, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that mandatory testing for the coronavirus would soon be required for people returning to Canada, on top ofpre-departure test requirements implemented earlier this year. Travellers will then have to wait up to three days at a government-approved hotel for their results, which Trudeau said must be paid by the traveller and could cost upwards of $2,000.
Ottawa isn’t banning non-essential travel; it’s making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible. Now, in addition to existing requirements, returning travellers will need to quarantine in a hotel for three days at their own expense, at a likely cost of at least $2,000. 2:33
“It’s not an experience that I would pay to have,” Hyunseo Cho said.
Cho and her husband, JT Stubbs, returned from South Korea in the early months of the pandemic. At the time, they were sharing a home with a pregnant relative and, unable to afford temporary accommodations, asked border officials if there was an alternative. They were transported to a hotel room where they spent 23 hours a day.
Unlike the regional isolation hotel, the young couple was not permitted to leave the hotel unless seeking urgent medical treatment. They were required to remain in their room for 14 days after arrival, with the exception of one hour of walking time each day in the fenced-off parking lot.
“Boredom was my big issue,” Cho recalled.
The couple is now strongly opposed to any international travel, except for emergency reasons.
Their experience — confined by security guards, seeing only cleaning staff passing through the peep-hole in the hotel door — may be indicative of what Canadians returning from abroad will now experience.
Saving lives in hotel isolation
While federal authorities are sending a message of discouragement through their new hotel quarantine urging Canadians to stop travelling abroad, regional officials are sending a very different message.
Peel Region is encouraging those who’ve been exposed to isolate safely with them. And besides the desire to protect their families and community, the care and monitoring people receive at Peel’s isolation hotel may help attract those who have been exposed or infected.
At the regional facility for local residents, nurse Rasheen Oliver is a veteran of isolation hotels. Just before Christmas in one of the hotels, she was caring for a woman whose health was rapidly deteriorating, but the woman’s anxiety about going to hospital was also high.
Nurse Rasheen Oliver says the work at isolation hotels is stressful, but also rewarding. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Oliver called an ambulance and coaxed the woman to leave the hotel. The patient ended up hospitalized for 21 days.
“If she would have stayed in the hotel room … she probably would have died. So she was very grateful. She sent me flowers and a beautiful card saying she would pray for me for the rest of her life.”
Oliver is now working at the newest of the four hotels, part of a team going door-to-door in full personal protective equipment (PPE) to regularly check on residents and respond to their concerns. As she does so, she remembers that one woman.
“It reminds me of why I’m here. The work in itself sometimes can be a little stressful, but it’s rewarding when you have moments like that.”
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LONGUEUIL, Que. – People in a part of Longueuil, Que., were being asked to stay indoors with their doors and windows closed on Thursday morning after a train derailed, spilling an unknown quantity of hydrogen peroxide.
Police from the city just east of Montreal said it didn’t appear anyone was hurt, although a CN rail official told a news conference that three employees had been taken to hospital as a precautionary measure.
The derailment happened at around 9 a.m. in the LeMoyne area, near the intersection of St-Louis and St-Georges streets. Mathieu Gaudreault, a spokesman for CN rail, said about eight cars derailed at the Southwark rail facility, including four that toppled over.
“As of this morning, the information we have is it’s hydrogen peroxide that was in the rail car and created the fumes we saw,” he said, adding that there was no risk of fire.
François Boucher, a spokesman for the Longueuil police department, said police were asking people in the area, including students at nearby schools, to stay indoors while experts ensure the air is safe to breathe.
“It is as a preventive measure that we encourage people to really avoid exposing themselves unnecessarily,” he told reporters near the scene.
Police and fire officials were on site, as well as CN railworkers, and a large security perimeter was erected.
Officers were asking people to avoid the sector, and the normally busy Highway 116 was closed in the area. The confinement notice includes everyone within 800 metres of the derailment, officials said, who added that it would be lifted once a team with expertise in dangerous materials has given the green light.
In addition to closing doors and windows, people in the area covered by the notice are asked to close heating, ventilation and air exchange systems, and to stay as far from windows as possible.
Gaudreault said it wasn’t yet clear what caused the derailment. The possibilities include a problem with the track, a problem with a manoeuvre, or a mechanical issue, he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s Liberal party is promising to improve cellphone service and invest in major highways if the party is elected to govern on Nov. 26.
Party leader Zach Churchill says a Liberal government would spend $60 million on building 87 new cellphone towers, which would be in addition to the $66 million the previous Progressive Conservative government committed to similar projects last year.
As well, Churchill confirmed the Liberals want to improve the province’s controlled access highways by adding exits along Highway 104 across the top of the mainland, and building a bypass along Highway 101 near Digby.
Churchill says the Liberals would add $40 million to the province’s $500 million capital budget for highways.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the three major political parties were expected to spend much of today preparing for a televised debate that will be broadcast tonight at 6 p.m. local time.
Churchill will face off against Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Houston and NDP Leader Claudia Chender during a 90-minute debate that will be carried live on CBC TV and streamed online.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
TORONTO – A group of hotel service workers in Toronto is set to hold a rally today outside the Fairmont Royal York to demand salary increases as hotel costs in the city skyrocket during Taylor Swift’s concerts.
Unite Here Local 75, the union representing 8,000 hospitality workers in the Greater Toronto Area, says Royal York employees have not seen a salary increase since 2021, and have been negotiating a new contract with the hotel since 2022.
The rally comes as the megastar begins her series of six sold-out concerts in Toronto, with the last show scheduled for Nov. 23.
During show weekends, some hotel rooms and short-term rentals in Toronto are priced up to 10 times more than other weekends, with some advertised for as much as $2,000 per night.
The union says hotel workers who will be serving Swifties during her Toronto stops are bargaining for raises to keep up with the rising cost of living.
The union represents hospitality workers including food service employees, room attendants and bell persons.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
