What was arguably the most frightening chapter in Manitoba’s pandemic story – the news on April 2 that more than 100 staff at the Health Sciences Centre had been sent home after being exposed to COVID-19 – has finally ended.

“We are very happy to announce that infection prevention and control officials have declared this outbreak over,” Shared Health nursing chief Lanette Siragusa said Friday at the province’s daily COVID-19 media briefing.

On April 2, it was revealed 40 nurses, 30 allied health professionals, 20 support staff, 15 security guards and an untold number of physicians had been sent home to self-isolate for 14 days due to potential contact with the coronavirus at Manitoba’s largest hospital.

The following week, it was learned that just 10 workers and four patients in a medicine unit at the HSC tested positive. The patients were in isolation and being cared for, Siragusa said at the time. Health officials were able to trace contacts back to the initial case of COVID-19 in the unit, and none of the staff who tested positive had been to work since April 1.

“It, to me, feels like a long time ago,” Siragusa said Friday. “This began on March 30. Since that time, there’s been two rounds of incubation periods that have passed,” prompting the outbreak to be declared over, she said.

“Most of the staff are back at work, and we are happy that they are healthy.” Two other staff members are still recovering at home but “we hope to see them soon.” She wanted to remind people of the efforts required to get the outbreak under control.

“It’s important that on a day-by-day basis we maintain that. Cleaning the unit, limiting group activities, minimizing patient transfers, restricting patient movement within the unit, were all strategies that they implemented.” Visitor restrictions and staff screening measures put in place shortly after the outbreak also helped, said Siragusa.

“It was a very difficult, stressful time, I know. Everyone’s happy to have some semblance of normal there,” she said, pivoting to Mother’s Day this Sunday, which will not be normal.

“It’s one for the history books,” she said. People with moms in hospitals or care homes who can’t visit them in person will need to show their love in creative ways from a safe distance — outdoors, through a window or virtually online — “anything we can do to limit the spread of the virus.”

The isolating of personal care home residents could let up soon, Siragusa said, “as we look toward modifying visitor restrictions in the near future as we get back to a semblance of normalcy.”

Health Minister Cameron Friesen said he’s looking forward to a new normal, with improved ways of providing health care services — thanks partly to lessons learned from COVID-19. Things like virtual doctors visits and limiting health care workers to one personal care home site to prevent the spread of the virus could have lasting benefits, he said at a teleconference with reporters Friday.

“I think about the potential to make a difference in typical influenza season and if this might not help,” he said. “There will be some important learnings that we take away from this.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca