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Ontario's infection prevention team sidelined due to politics, commission hears – CTV Toronto

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3 years ago

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TORONTO —
Bureaucratic turf concerns prevented a highly trained team of infection prevention and control experts from helping Ontario long-term care homes in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, an independent commission has heard.

Dr. Gary Garber, the former medical director of infection prevention and control at Public Health Ontario, testified last week that his department was asked to maintain a “low profile” in order to avoid being “subsumed” by the newly created Ontario Health.

The reorganization, which the province said would modernize the health-care system and save millions of dollars, occurred on Jan. 22, 2020. The next day, a Toronto hospital admitted the first patient in Canada with the novel coronavirus.

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In March, when a growing number of long-term care homes in the province were reporting COVID-19 outbreaks, Garber said 25 to 30 highly trained experts from Public Health Ontario watched from the sidelines.

“At the time, I was explaining it to people that COVID really was the IPAC (infection prevention and control) Olympics, that we had people who had been training for years,” Garber told the Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission.

Instead, he said, the team was told not to get involved.

“We were basically told, ‘No, we don’t have the bandwidth for that. No, we can’t do that. No, it’s…the health unit’s responsibility to do that.”

Public Health Ontario said in a statement to The Canadian Press that it did not prohibit its infection prevention specialists from going into nursing homes, but it noted that “with a small team at PHO, it was not possible to meet every request.”

The commission has heard about numerous failures in infection prevention and control in nursing homes in the pandemic’s first wave, from not isolating sick residents from healthy ones to the lack, or misuse, of personal protective equipment.

In its first set of interim recommendations to the Minister of Long-Term Care on Oct. 23, 2020, the commission said major improvements in infection prevention and control were needed. It also said inspections teams should be sent in to nursing homes immediately to evaluate and improve IPAC protocols.

Garber said the infection prevention and control experts were finally allowed to help out the homes in late April.

He said one of his most frustrating moments came in March when he was on the line with a nursing home that had reported only a couple of COVID-19 cases.

“Can you cohort? Can you move the sick people? Can you take the ones you know have COVID in one place, the sick people in another and separate them from the rest?” Garber recalled asking the home, which he did not name.

“And the answer I was told was no. And it was the one time — maybe one of the few times in my career that I just felt helpless because I just knew what was going to happen.”

He said about 90 per cent of the residents in that home became infected with COVID-19.

The commission is investigating how the novel coronavirus spread in the long-term care system and will submit its final report on April 30, 2021.

Hearings are not open to the public, but transcripts of testimony are posted online days or weeks later.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2021.

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Trump faces political risks as trial begins – NBC News

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7 hours ago

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April 17, 2024

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April 15, 202400:53

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As Donald Trump the candidate overlaps with Donald Trump the defendant, new polling finds that many crucial independent voters consider his trial to be a serious issue. NBC News’ Hallie Jackson reports.April 15, 2024

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Florida's Bob Graham dead at 87: A leader who looked beyond politics, served ordinary folks – Toronto Star

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9 hours ago

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April 17, 2024

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A leader like Bob Graham would be a unicorn in the hyper-partisan politics of today.

The former Florida governor and U.S. senator wasn’t a slick, slogan-spouting politician. He didn’t have an us-against-them mentality. Sometimes, he even came across as more of a kind-hearted professor just trying to make the world a better place.

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The Earthquake Shaking BC Politics

Published

11 hours ago

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April 17, 2024

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Six months from now Kevin Falcon is going to be staggering toward a catastrophic defeat for the remnants of the BC Liberals.

But what that will mean for the province’s political future is still up in the air, with the uncertainty increased by two shocking polls that show the Conservatives far ahead of BC United and only a few percentage points behind the NDP.

BC United is already toast, done in by self-inflicted wounds and the arrival of John Rustad and the Conservative Party of BC.

Falcon’s party has stumbled since the decision to abandon the BC Liberal brand in favour of BC United. The change, promoted by Falcon and approved by party members, took place a year ago this week. It was an immediate disaster.

That was made much worse when Rustad relaunched the B.C. Conservatives after Falcon kicked him out of caucus for doubting the basic science of climate change.

Falcon’s party had fallen from 33 per cent support to 19 per cent, trailing the Conservatives at 25 per cent. (The NDP has 42 per cent support.) That’s despite his repeated assurances that voters would quickly become familiar with the BC United brand.

BC United is left with almost no safe seats in this election based on the current polling.

Take Abbotsford West, where Mike de Jong is quitting after 30 years in the legislature to seek a federal Conservative nomination. It’s been a BC Liberal/United stronghold. In 2020 de Jong captured 46 per cent of the votes to the New Democrats’ 37 per cent and the Conservatives’ nine per cent.

But that was when the Conservatives were at about eight per cent in the polls, not 25 per cent.

Double their vote in this October’s election at the expense of the Liberals — a cautious estimate — and the NDP wins.

United’s prospects are even worse in ridings that were close in the 2020 election, like Skeena. Ellis Ross took it for the BC Liberals in 2020 with 52 per cent of the vote to the NDP’s 45 per cent.

But there was no Conservative candidate. Rustad has committed to running a candidate in every riding and the NDP can count on an easy win in Skeena.

It’s the same story across the province. The Conservatives and BC United will split the centre-right vote, handing the NDP easy wins and a big majority. And BC United will be fighting to avoid being beaten by the Conservatives in the ridings that are in play.

United’s situation became even more dire last week. A Liaison Strategies poll found the NDP at 38 per cent support, Conservatives at 34 per cent, United at 16 per cent and Greens at 11 per cent. That’s similar to a March poll from Mainstreet Research.

If those polls are accurate, BC United could end up with no seats. Voters who don’t want an NDP government will consider strategic voting based on which party has a chance of winning in their ridings.
Based on the Liaison poll, that would be the Conservatives. That’s especially true outside Vancouver and Vancouver Island, where the poll shows the Conservatives at 39 per cent, the NDP at 30 per cent and United lagging at 19 per cent. (The caveat about the polls’ accuracy is important. Curtis Fric and Philippe J. Fournier offer a useful analysis of possible factors affecting the results on Substack.)

And contributors will also be making some hard choices about which party gets their money. Until now BC United was far ahead of the Conservatives, thanks to its strong fundraising structure and the perception that it was the front-runner on the right. That’s under threat.

The polls also mark a big change in the NDP’s situation. This election looked like a cakewalk, with a divided centre-right splitting the vote and a big majority almost guaranteed. Most polls this year gave the New Democrats at least a 17 per cent lead over the Conservatives.

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