TORONTO —
A personal support worker (PSW) at a long-term care facility in Ontario is blowing the whistle on “dire” conditions in the home, claiming patients are still sharing rooms with as many as four other people despite a widespread COVID-19 outbreak and a mounting death toll.

“Their beds are two feet from each other. No wonder it is spreading,” Rebecca Shaw-Piironen, a PSW at Anson Place, located an hour southwest of Toronto, told CTV News.

“I don’t know how much more of an emergency this could be. People are dying, and daily. I don’t know what today is going to bring, or tonight. Why aren’t we taking care of our people?”

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Fifty-five residents have tested positive for the novel coronavirus at Anson Place, located in Hagersville, Ont. As of Monday, 15 residents have died.

At least 30 staff members have also tested positive for the virus, putting massive strain on the homes ability to care for its residents. Those who are left are burnt out and overwhelmed with grief, Shaw-Piironen says.

“We need help. This is dire,” she said from home as she awaited her own test results.

“So many lost so fast and so many all at once. The magnitude of this… my heart just aches. Me and me and my coworkers, we were just so sad right now.”

Ontario’s Minister of Labour is already investigating allegations that management didn’t act fast enough or give staff enough warning when patients first started testing positive.

Anson Place did not respond to requests for comment regarding the allegations.

However, Lisa Roth, the executive director at Anson Place, previously told CTV Kitchener that a number of steps are being taken to stop the spread of the virus.

Roth said residents who have tested positive for COVID-19 are being kept in strict self-isolation and healthy residents are staying in their rooms. She said staff members are being monitored for symptoms as they come and go from the facility, noting that Anson Place has recruited “additional care and cleaning staff” to give workers extra support.

Shaw-Piironen says she is risking her job by speaking out publically, but says her concerns about patient care outweigh the repercussions.

“I’d rather live in a cardboard box and feel that I did those residents right then to shut up and not say anything,” she said.

“They need help. They’re desperate. And I don’t know what we have to do to get the help in there.”

On Monday, Canada’s chief public health officer revealed nearly half of the COVID-19 deaths in the country are linked to outbreaks in long-term care homes.

“These deaths will continue to increase, even as the epidemic growth rate slows down,” Dr. Theresa Tam warned during a press conference Monday.

“We need to protect our seniors, so stay home and save lives.”

The federal government is urging these facilities to heed the latest national guidelines to control the spread of COVID-19 among their vulnerable residents.

Joining the daily ministerial update on the novel coronavirus, Seniors Minister Deb Schulte said that heeding the newly-released advice is “critical” in slowing the pandemic’s spread within seniors’ homes, as they are at a high risk.

In an interview on CTV’s Power Play, Schulte said the new guidelines aren’t meant to say the workers in these facilities are not doing enough, but there is “no doubt” the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed holes where improvements are needed.

“We didn’t have a playbook,” she said about how to handle care for seniors in relation to this novel coronavirus.

– With files from Rachel Aiello​