Health
Situation 'improving substantially' at long-term care homes – BarrieToday
Simcoe-Muskoka’s medical officer of health hopes the region and the province are turning a corner when it comes to long-term care residents becoming infected with the deadly coronavirus.
Since Friday, May 15, there were no additional positive found in long-term care residents in the region.
Friday also marked the final day of universal testing in the province, and the health unit reports there were more than 7,000 tests completed on residents and staff in long-term care homes in the region as well as at five emergency child-care centres.
While not all the results have come back from that universal testing, Dr. Charles Gardner, medical officer of health for Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit, said things look positive both in the region and in the province.
“I touch wood,” he said. “Things improve because of actions taken … it appears things are improving quite substantially.”
Through the universal testing mandated by the province, the health unit discovered three positive COVID-19 results in residents at Collingwood Nursing Home. All three of the women were asymptomatic when the positive results were reported.
Gardner said one woman is now showing signs of respiratory illness.
That was the first time the health unit discovered an outbreak where all those with COVID-19 were not yet showing symptoms of the coronavirus.
However, Friday marked the end of universal testing in the region.
Though there was talk of further testing once the long-term care facilities were complete, Gardner said the health unit will not be continuing with universal testing of residents in retirement homes or other congregate settings, such as group homes.
“If the province directs us, we certainly will,” said Gardner.
In the meantime, the health unit is closely monitoring congregate living facilities. If anyone develops symptoms they are tested for COVID-19, and if any cases come back positive, every resident and staff member at the facility will be tested.
As health experts predict COVID-19 will be here for the foreseeable future, Gardner said there’s time now to consider longer-term approaches to control measures such as testing.
“We have to think about how do we continue to operate testing in the future,” said Gardner. “Will it be through assessment centres or through primary care physicians?
“I’m sure our approach is going to change over time, because things don’t stay the same forever. We put together those assessment centres in a rush … now is the time to revise what we do to make it optimal,” he said.
Gardner said he’s seen a decrease in the demand for testing on a provincial level. And with the universal testing for long-term care facilities now passed, there will not be the same demand for test results unless the province mandates further universal testing in other sectors or in other congregate settings.
“My understanding … is there hasn’t been a big uptake from the population,” he said. “You’ve got a falling incidence of infection right now. Perhaps the demand in part is related to a reduction in cases themselves.”
Though the demand might be lower right now, Gardner said it’s important to maintain a strong capacity for testing. If cases in Ontario start to increase again as more businesses and sectors of the economy open up, the ability to process tests will be necessary.
He also noted the world, in particular Ontario, would have to deal with this coronavirus until a vaccine is developed and gets widespread distribution.
“Certainly we would want there to be capacity … if that should happen,” said Gardner. “We have to make sure people can get tested … we have to have the surveillance to know how well we’re controlling the pandemic.”
In the Simcoe-Muskoka region, there have been 432 cases of COVID-19 confirmed through lab testing. Of those, 303 people have recovered, eight people are in hospital, and 34 people have died.
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Interior Health says it delivered nearly 800,000 immunization doses last year — a number almost equal to the region’s population.
The released figure of 784,980 comes during National Immunization Awareness Week, which runs April 22-30.
The health care organization, which serves a large area of around 820,000, says it’s using the occasion to boost vaccine rates even though there may be post-pandemic vaccine fatigue.
“This is a very important initiative because it ensures that communicable diseases stay away from a region,” said Dr. Silvina Mema of Interior Health.
However, not all those doses were for COVID; the tally includes childhood immunizations plus immunizations for adults.
But IHA said immunizations are down from the height of the pandemic, when COVID vaccines were rolled out, though it seems to be on par with previous pre-pandemic years.
Interior Health says it’d like to see the overall immunization rate rise.
“Certainly there are some folks who have decided a vaccine is not for them. And they have their reasons,” said Jonathan Spence, manager of communicable disease prevention and control at Interior Health.
“I think there’s a lot of people who are hesitant, but that’s just simply because they have questions.
“And that’s actually part of what we’re celebrating this week is those public health nurses, those pharmacists, who can answer questions and answer questions with really good information around immunization.”
Mima echoed that sentiment.
“We take immunization very seriously. It’s a science-based program that has saved countless lives across the world and eliminated diseases that were before a threat and now we don’t see them anymore,” she said.
“So immunization is very important.”
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that samples of pasteurized milk had tested positive for remnants of the bird flu virus that has infected dairy cows.
The agency stressed that the material is inactivated and that the findings “do not represent actual virus that may be a risk to consumers.” Officials added that they’re continuing to study the issue.
“To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the FDA said in a statement.
The announcement comes nearly a month after an avian influenza virus that has sickened millions of wild and commercial birds in recent years was detected in dairy cows in at least eight states. The Agriculture Department says 33 herds have been affected to date.
FDA officials didn’t indicate how many samples they tested or where they were obtained. The agency has been evaluating milk during processing and from grocery stores, officials said. Results of additional tests are expected in “the next few days to weeks.”
The PCR lab test the FDA used would have detected viral genetic material even after live virus was killed by pasteurization, or heat treatment, said Lee-Ann Jaykus, an emeritus food microbiologist and virologist at North Carolina State University
“There is no evidence to date that this is infectious virus and the FDA is following up on that,” Jaykus said.
Officials with the FDA and the USDA had previously said milk from affected cattle did not enter the commercial supply. Milk from sick animals is supposed to be diverted and destroyed. Federal regulations require milk that enters interstate commerce to be pasteurized.
Because the detection of the bird flu virus known as Type A H5N1 in dairy cattle is new and the situation is evolving, no studies on the effects of pasteurization on the virus have been completed, FDA officials said. But past research shows that pasteurization is “very likely” to inactivate heat-sensitive viruses like H5N1, the agency added.
Matt Herrick, a spokesman for the International Dairy Foods Association, said that time and temperature regulations for pasteurization ensure that the commercial U.S. milk supply is safe. Remnants of the virus “have zero impact on human health,” he wrote in an email.
Scientists confirmed the H5N1 virus in dairy cows in March after weeks of reports that cows in Texas were suffering from a mysterious malady. The cows were lethargic and saw a dramatic reduction in milk production. Although the H5N1 virus is lethal to commercial poultry, most infected cattle seem to recover within two weeks, experts said.
To date, two people in U.S. have been infected with bird flu. A Texas dairy worker who was in close contact with an infected cow recently developed a mild eye infection and has recovered. In 2022, a prison inmate in a work program caught it while killing infected birds at a Colorado poultry farm. His only symptom was fatigue, and he recovered.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Canada is about where it should be when it comes to childhood vaccines, but for adult vaccinations it’s a different story.
Dr. Vivien Brown of Immunize Canada says the overall population should have rates of between 80 and 90 per cent for most vaccines, but that is not the case.
She says most children are in that range but not for adult vaccines and ultimately the most at-risk populations are not being reached.
She says the population is under immunized for conditions such as pneumonia, shingles, tetanus, and pertussis.
Brown wants people to talk with their family physician or pharmacist to see if they are up-to-date on vaccines, and to get caught up because many are “killer diseases.”
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