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Nurses and personal support workers on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19 at city-operated long-term care homes say a stricter testing regimen for staff could have helped contain a facility-wide outbreak at the Peter D. Clark Centre, where mass surveillance testing last week turned up two new positive cases in staff.
The latest round of surveillance testing, where every staff member tested had no symptoms, also detected a new coronavirus case in a staff member at the Garry J. Armstrong Centre, where a facility-wide outbreak in May had been quelled.
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‘Like sitting ducks’ Staff at city-run long-term care home say stricter testing could have stopped spread Back to video
“We feel like we’re trapped here,” said one nurse at the Peter D. Clark Centre, the hardest-hit of the the four homes operated by the City of Ottawa, where the outbreak has now stretched into its 48th day. “It’s like we’re sitting ducks. Like it’s not a matter of if but when.”
Several staff at the city-run home contacted this newspaper in the week since a nurse first came forward with complaints over the flow of staff from one secure unit where the virus was first detected on April 28 — the home’s dementia unit known as the Bungalow, a locked unit with a separate entrance — to other areas as the outbreak spread through the 216-bed home.
