Manitoba bans in-store sales of non-essential items, visitors to homes with some exceptions | Canada News Media
Connect with us

Health

Manitoba bans in-store sales of non-essential items, visitors to homes with some exceptions

Published

 on

Manitoba is clamping down on private gatherings and businesses selling non-essential items in an effort to slow the alarming rise in coronavirus infections in the province.

New COVID-19 public health orders will prohibit people from having anyone inside their home who doesn’t live there, with few exceptions, and businesses from selling non-essential items in stores.

Previous orders, which came into effect last week, allowed gatherings at private residences of up to five people beyond those who normally live there, although Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin and others pleaded with Manitobans to stay home and only go out for essential items.

“Despite that, we saw people gathering at rallies, we saw crowded parking lots at big-box stores, we saw people continue to go out for non-essential items,” Roussin said at a news conference Thursday.

“So we’re left with no choice but to announce further measures to protect Manitobans, to limit the spread of this virus.”

 

Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin pleaded with Manitobans to stay home as new public health orders came into effect Friday. 1:16

Exceptions to the no-visitors rule include visits between a child and a parent or guardian who does not normally live with that child, and people providing child care or other services deemed essential, such as education, construction or repairs, and deliveries.

People who live alone will also be allowed to have one designated person in their home as a visitor, and they can also visit that person.

Businesses that sell essential items such as food, medication, office supplies and major appliances will be required to remove any non-essential goods from the shelves or rope off those areas.

The new orders also further restrict capacity at large retailers to either 25 per cent of normal capacity or a maximum of 250 people, whichever is lower. Previous public health orders simply limited capacity at 25 per cent, without a hard cap on numbers.

The orders come into effect on Friday, except for the rule requiring businesses to prevent access to non-essential items; businesses must not sell non-essential goods starting Friday, but have until Saturday to remove them from shelves or rope off those areas of stores. Curbside pickup of non-essential items will still be allowed.

The restrictions will remain in effect until at least Dec. 11.

 

Parking lots were full at many big-box stores in Winnipeg last Monday, while Manitobans were urged to stay home. (Trevor Brine/CBC)

 

Premier Brian Pallister warned people against using the time before then to stock up on non-essential items.

“Don’t rush out to the stores … to take advantage of the opportunity to hurt yourself and others,” he said at the news conference.

Items deemed essential under the new orders include food, personal care and health products, baby and child-care items, outdoor winter clothing and pet supplies. Liquor and cannabis sales will also be permitted.

Non-essential items include books, toys, jewelry, flowers, perfume, consumer electronics and sporting equipment.

A list of essential and non-essential items is available on the provincial government’s website.

Violated ‘spirit’ of old orders

Under the earlier critical-level orders, only stores that sold essential items were allowed to remain open, but many of those businesses also sold non-essential items.

 

 

With cases still spiking, Manitoba has announced stiff new COVID-19 restrictions, including what officials call the toughest retail restrictions in Canada, meaning Manitobans will soon find it hard to buy anything not deemed essential. 2:27

Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman called on the province to close that loophole and ban the sale of non-essential items.

The new restrictions on gatherings only apply to private residences. Existing orders limiting public gatherings outside the home to five people remain in effect, to allow for events such as weddings, funerals and baptisms to take place.

Businesses must provide proof that the capacity limits have not been exceeded if an enforcement official requests it, the province said.

Manitoba’s restrictions are the strongest in the country, but some people and businesses violated the “spirit” of the original orders, which made these stricter measures necessary, Pallister said.

“We all understand that the next few weeks are not going to be easy, but there is a reward waiting for us if we do the right things now,” Pallister said.

“The best thing we can do for our local businesses … to help them get back into business, is to beat COVID down.”

Businesses that violate the public health orders could be hit with a $5,000 fine.

When asked about businesses that might decide potential profits outweigh the risk of the fine, Pallister said those businesses could be shut down entirely.

“So don’t think you can profit in the short term at the expense of putting lives at risk,” he said.

These new orders come as the per capita daily COVID-19 case numbers in Manitoba remain the highest in Canada, despite the government moving the entire province to red, or critical — the highest level on the pandemic response system.

There were 475 new cases and eight more deaths announced on Thursday.

Conflict for cashiers

A representative of the Retail Council of Canada said although retailers understand what needs to be done, they are disappointed that Manitoba has reached the point of needing further restrictions on the few remaining stores that are allowed open.

“People are going to be working overtime to comply to these orders, and we hope that there is just some patience in getting there,” said John Graham, director of government relations for the council’s Prairie region.

Despite the efforts of stores to remove items or cordon off sections, Graham says customers in other jurisdictions with similar restrictions still try to buy items that they consider to be essential, but the orders do not.

That can lead to conflict for cashiers, who are placed in the position of deciding whether a customer can purchase an item, Graham said.

The further restrictions on capacity will also likely lead to longer lines at many stores, Graham said.

Doctors Manitoba, meanwhile, says it supports the restrictions.

“We know these restrictions are difficult. We know you want to be there for your family and friends. But the best way to support the ones you love is to stay home and stop the spread,” a statement from the professional association said.

 

 

Provincial officials give update on COVID-19 outbreak: Thusday, November 19, 2020. 44:52

Source:

Source link

Continue Reading

Health

Older patients, non-English speakers more likely to be harmed in hospital: report

Published

 on

 

Patients who are older, don’t speak English, and don’t have a high school education are more likely to experience harm during a hospital stay in Canada, according to new research.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information measured preventableharmful events from 2023 to 2024, such as bed sores and medication errors,experienced by patients who received acute care in hospital.

The research published Thursday shows patients who don’t speak English or French are 30 per cent more likely to experience harm. Patients without a high school education are 20 per cent more likely to endure harm compared to those with higher education levels.

The report also found that patients 85 and older are five times more likely to experience harm during a hospital stay compared to those under 20.

“The goal of this report is to get folks thinking about equity as being a key dimension of the patient safety effort within a hospital,” says Dana Riley, an author of the report and a program lead on CIHI’s population health team.

When a health-care provider and a patient don’t speak the same language, that can result in the administration of a wrong test or procedure, research shows. Similarly, Riley says a lower level of education is associated with a lower level of health literacy, which can result in increased vulnerability to communication errors.

“It’s fairly costly to the patient and it’s costly to the system,” says Riley, noting the average hospital stay for a patient who experiences harm is four times more expensive than the cost of a hospital stay without a harmful event – $42,558 compared to $9,072.

“I think there are a variety of different reasons why we might start to think about patient safety, think about equity, as key interconnected dimensions of health-care quality,” says Riley.

The analysis doesn’t include data on racialized patients because Riley says pan-Canadian data was not available for their research. Data from Quebec and some mental health patients was also excluded due to differences in data collection.

Efforts to reduce patient injuries at one Ontario hospital network appears to have resulted in less harm. Patient falls at Mackenzie Health causing injury are down 40 per cent, pressure injuries have decreased 51 per cent, and central line-associated bloodstream infections, such as IV therapy, have been reduced 34 per cent.

The hospital created a “zero harm” plan in 2019 to reduce errors after a hospital survey revealed low safety scores. They integrated principles used in aviation and nuclear industries, which prioritize safety in complex high-risk environments.

“The premise is first driven by a cultural shift where people feel comfortable actually calling out these events,” says Mackenzie Health President and Chief Executive Officer Altaf Stationwala.

They introduced harm reduction training and daily meetings to discuss risks in the hospital. Mackenzie partnered with virtual interpreters that speak 240 languages and understand medical jargon. Geriatric care nurses serve the nearly 70 per cent of patients over the age of 75, and staff are encouraged to communicate as frequently as possible, and in plain language, says Stationwala.

“What we do in health care is we take control away from patients and families, and what we know is we need to empower patients and families and that ultimately results in better health care.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Health

Alberta to launch new primary care agency by next month in health overhaul

Published

 on

 

CALGARY – Alberta’s health minister says a new agency responsible for primary health care should be up and running by next month.

Adriana LaGrange says Primary Care Alberta will work to improve Albertans’ access to primary care providers like family doctors or nurse practitioners, create new models of primary care and increase access to after-hours care through virtual means.

Her announcement comes as the provincial government continues to divide Alberta Health Services into four new agencies.

LaGrange says Alberta Health Services hasn’t been able to focus on primary health care, and has been missing system oversight.

The Alberta government’s dismantling of the health agency is expected to include two more organizations responsible for hospital care and continuing care.

Another new agency, Recovery Alberta, recently took over the mental health and addictions portfolio of Alberta Health Services.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Health

Experts urge streamlined, more compassionate miscarriage care in Canada

Published

 on

 

Rana Van Tuyl was about 12 weeks pregnant when she got devastating news at her ultrasound appointment in December 2020.

Her fetus’s heartbeat had stopped.

“We were both shattered,” says Van Tuyl, who lives in Nanaimo, B.C., with her partner. Her doctor said she could surgically or medically pass the pregnancy and she chose the medical option, a combination of two drugs taken at home.

“That was the last I heard from our maternity physician, with no further followup,” she says.

But complications followed. She bled for a month and required a surgical procedure to remove pregnancy tissue her body had retained.

Looking back, Van Tuyl says she wishes she had followup care and mental health support as the couple grieved.

Her story is not an anomaly. Miscarriages affect one in five pregnancies in Canada, yet there is often a disconnect between the medical view of early pregnancy loss as something that is easily managed and the reality of the patients’ own traumatizing experiences, according to a paper published Tuesday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

An accompanying editorial says it’s time to invest in early pregnancy assessment clinics that can provide proper care during and after a miscarriage, which can have devastating effects.

The editorial and a review of medical literature on early pregnancy loss say patients seeking help in emergency departments often receive “suboptimal” care. Non-critical miscarriage cases drop to the bottom of the triage list, resulting in longer wait times that make patients feel like they are “wasting” health-care providers’ time. Many of those patients are discharged without a followup plan, the editorial says.

But not all miscarriages need to be treated in the emergency room, says Dr. Modupe Tunde-Byass, one of the authors of the literature review and an obstetrician/gynecologist at Toronto’s North York General Hospital.

She says patients should be referred to early pregnancy assessment clinics, which provide compassionate care that accounts for the psychological impact of pregnancy loss – including grief, guilt, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.

But while North York General Hospital and a patchwork of other health-care providers in the country have clinics dedicated to miscarriage care, Tunde-Byass says that’s not widely adopted – and it should be.

She’s been thinking about this gap in the Canadian health-care system for a long time, ever since her medical training almost four decades ago in the United Kingdom, where she says early pregnancy assessment centres are common.

“One of the things that we did at North York was to have a clinic to provide care for our patients, and also to try to bridge that gap,” says Tunde-Byass.

Provincial agency Health Quality Ontario acknowledged in 2019 the need for these services in a list of ways to better manage early pregnancy complications and loss.

“Five years on, little if any progress has been made toward achieving this goal,” Dr. Catherine Varner, an emergency physician, wrote in the CMAJ editorial. “Early pregnancy assessment services remain a pipe dream for many, especially in rural Canada.”

The quality standard released in Ontario did, however, prompt a registered nurse to apply for funding to open an early pregnancy assessment clinic at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton in 2021.

Jessica Desjardins says that after taking patient referrals from the hospital’s emergency room, the team quickly realized that they would need a bigger space and more people to provide care. The clinic now operates five days a week.

“We’ve been often hearing from our patients that early pregnancy loss and experiencing early pregnancy complications is a really confusing, overwhelming, isolating time for them, and (it) often felt really difficult to know where to go for care and where to get comprehensive, well-rounded care,” she says.

At the Hamilton clinic, Desjardins says patients are brought into a quiet area to talk and make decisions with providers – “not only (from) a physical perspective, but also keeping in mind the psychosocial piece that comes along with loss and the grief that’s a piece of that.”

Ashley Hilliard says attending an early pregnancy assessment clinic at The Ottawa Hospital was the “best case scenario” after the worst case scenario.

In 2020, she was about eight weeks pregnant when her fetus died and she hemorrhaged after taking medication to pass the pregnancy at home.

Shortly after Hilliard was rushed to the emergency room, she was assigned an OB-GYN at an early pregnancy assessment clinic who directed and monitored her care, calling her with blood test results and sending her for ultrasounds when bleeding and cramping persisted.

“That was super helpful to have somebody to go through just that, somebody who does this all the time,” says Hilliard.

“It was really validating.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2024.

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Exit mobile version