ATIKOKAN – Visiting at the Atikokan hospital’s long-term care wing is restricted and all visitors must mask up while the facility deals with a major outbreak of COVID-19.
Fifteen of the 25 patients in long-term care have tested positive for the respiratory virus while seven more are in isolation because of respiratory symptoms, Atikokan General Hospital chief executive officer Jennifer Learning said Wednesday.
Each long-term care patient at the hospital is allowed one caregiver in at a time, and caregivers must wear masks, she said.
“We were allowing two, but because (COVID) is spreading so much we’ve reduced it down to one,” she explained. “So they're allowed one caregiver in who wears a mask.”
Staff are required to wear N95 masks, which are more protective of the wearer and others than the surgical-style masks that visitors wear.
Visitors aren’t required to wear N95s because that type of mask must be individually fitted and “we can’t fit everyone for an N95 mask,” Learning said.
She said the hospital knew something was afoot just a couple of days after Christmas, when a sizable number of patients were displaying dry cough and runny nose symptoms.
Meanwhile, “staff started calling in sick,” she said.
“So we started isolating (patients) and then swabbing them, and then we declared an outbreak on Dec. 30.”
The public was notified of the outbreak that day, Learning said.
It’s unsurprising to see a COVID outbreak during this “respiratory season,” she remarked.
COVID, respiratory syncytial virus (known as RSV) and influenza are public health concerns, she said. “So we all wear our PPE (personal protective equipment), we've had our masks on in long-term care.
“All the staff wear masks 24 hours in long-term care and (in acute care), because we know it's flu season. We implemented that a few months ago because it was starting to ramp up again and (masking) does reduce the spread of influenza and COVID.”
But people will come in with viruses they don’t know they have and the likelihood of a virus being introduced increases as visitor numbers swell during the holiday season, she said.
