Long-term care facilities, hospitals battle COVID outbreaks; health workers’ sick-time calls rise

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/08/2022 (1144 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After four consecutive months free from isolation, illness and COVID-19, the Convalescent Home of Winnipeg was once again placed on high alert last week with the return of five positive test results.

The Fort Rouge-based nursing home is one of 10 long-term care facilities in Winnipeg working to contain COVID-19 while the virus spreads unchecked in the community following a busy summer that saw Manitobans gather in droves.

“You don’t necessarily know who brought it in or where it came from. It’s just prevalent in the community right now,” said Sherry Heppner, development co-ordinator for the Fort Rouge-based personal-care home. “We were doing really well.”

For five weeks, public-health officials have reported increased COVID-19 activity based on elevated test-positivity rates, confirmed cases and outbreaks within health-care facilities.

Four city hospitals had declared COVID-19 outbreaks as of Friday. Sick-time calls from health-care workers in Winnipeg have also increased over the past four weeks.

In a two-week period ending Thursday, about 55,000 hours per week were lost to sick time, accounting for 6.73 per cent of all hours worked, according to Shared Health. During the same period in 2019, the rate of absenteeism was 5.04 per cent.

Hours lost to sick time increased by nearly nine per cent in mid- to late August compared to early July, data provided by Shared Health shows.

“While COVID has and continues to be a direct factor that’s driving higher rates of staff absence, it is impossible to gauge to what degree, as data is not formally tracked on an ongoing basis by reason of absence,” a spokesperson for Shared Health said in a statement.

“The high transmissibility of current variants and a return to more normal levels of socializing this spring and summer are also factors in play, as is the physical and mental impact the past two and a half years has had on health-care staff.”

Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said her members are physically and mentally exhausted from consistently working short-staffed.

“This situation is knocking down the staff we have,” Jackson said. “We know better than most that if you deprive people of adequate rest, limit their ability to eat properly or get a sufficient amount of sleep they will be more susceptible to illness.”

Winnipeg-based epidemiologist Cynthia Carr said it is difficult to measure how much COVID-19 is currently in the community because of limited testing. However, the more infectious Omicron variant BA.5 is circulating widely at a time when immunity from vaccination could be waning among people who are not yet eligible for a second booster dose.

“It doesn’t look like we’re in a new wave right now and certainly nationally there’s been a dropoff in confirmed cases. We’re all battling BA.5 still, which is highly infectious,” said Carr, owner of EPI Research Inc. “So, it’s not surprising to hear even anecdotally from organizations or friend groups or through absenteeism that there’s more reports of confirmed cases through rapid tests.”

Carr said there’s no reason to think spread of the virus will slow as people head indoors and back to school, adding she will be closely monitoring the impact of bivalent vaccines — designed to fight off two or more strains of the virus — on infections and severe outcomes over the winter, if and when they become available.

“That’s several months into the future at best, so we don’t want to rely on that,” she said. “We want to continue to rely on what are the optimal conditions for the prevention of spread and prevention of severe outcomes.”

Back at the Convalescent Home, with the benefit of vaccines and seasoned staff, Heppner said the perspective of residents, family and workers on COVID-19 has shifted since the nightmare experience of outbreaks in late 2020.

So far, residents’ symptoms are extremely mild, Heppner said, and there is optimism the outbreak could be over by early next week. No residents have died from COVID-19 since January 2021, she added.

“We certainly take it very seriously from an infection-control perspective,” she said. “But it’s almost as if you have become used to the news, and by no means complacent, but you do feel more optimistic that the end result is not going to be a tragedy.”

No one with Manitoba Public Health was available for comment Monday.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca