{"id":11683,"date":"2020-04-13T22:57:50","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T02:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/?p=11683"},"modified":"2020-05-25T11:25:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-25T15:25:36","slug":"long-term-care-home-employee-speaks-out-amid-rising-covid-19-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/long-term-care-home-employee-speaks-out-amid-rising-covid-19-deaths\/","title":{"rendered":"Long-term care home employee speaks out amid rising COVID-19 deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>TORONTO &#8212;<br \/>\n\tA personal support worker (PSW) at a long-term care facility in Ontario is blowing the whistle on \u201cdire\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cTheir beds are two feet from each other. No wonder it is spreading,\u201d Rebecca Shaw-Piironen, a PSW at Anson Place, located an hour southwest of Toronto, told CTV News.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI don&#8217;t know how much more of an emergency this could be. People are dying, and daily. I don&#8217;t know what today is going to bring, or tonight. Why aren&#8217;t we taking care of our people?\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ctvnews.ca\/newsletters\/the-covid19-brief-newsletter-signup\"><strong>Newsletter sign-up: Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n\tFifty-five residents have tested positive for the novel coronavirus at Anson Place, located in Hagersville, Ont. As of Monday, 15 residents have died.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAt 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.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cWe need help. This is dire,\u201d she said from home as she awaited her own test results.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cSo many lost so fast and so many all at once. The magnitude of this\u2026 my heart just aches. Me and me and my coworkers, we were just so sad right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tOntario&#8217;s Minister of Labour is already investigating allegations that management didn\u2019t act fast enough or give staff enough warning when patients first started testing positive.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAnson Place did not respond to requests for comment regarding the allegations.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHowever, 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.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRoth 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 \u201cadditional care and cleaning staff\u201d to give workers extra support.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tShaw-Piironen says she is risking her job by speaking out publically, but says her concerns about patient care outweigh the repercussions.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI&#8217;d rather live in a cardboard box and feel that I did those residents right then to shut up and not say anything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThey need help. They&#8217;re desperate. And I don&#8217;t know what we have to do to get the help in there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tOn Monday, Canada\u2019s chief public health officer revealed nearly half of the COVID-19 deaths in the country are linked to outbreaks in long-term care homes.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThese deaths will continue to increase, even as the epidemic growth rate slows down,\u201d Dr. Theresa Tam warned during a press conference Monday.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cWe need to protect our seniors, so stay home and save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe federal government is urging these facilities to heed the latest national guidelines to control the spread of COVID-19 among their vulnerable residents.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tJoining the daily ministerial update on the novel coronavirus, Seniors Minister Deb Schulte said that heeding the newly-released advice is \u201ccritical\u201d in slowing the pandemic&#8217;s spread within seniors\u2019 homes, as they are at a high risk.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn an interview on CTV\u2019s Power Play, Schulte said the new guidelines aren\u2019t meant to say the workers in these facilities are not doing enough, but there is \u201cno doubt\u201d the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed holes where improvements are needed.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a playbook,\u201d she said about how to handle care for seniors in relation to this novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<em>&#8211; With files from Rachel Aiello\u200b<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ctvnews.ca\/health\/coronavirus\/no-wonder-it-s-spreading-long-term-care-home-worker-speaks-out-as-death-toll-rises-1.4894871\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TORONTO &#8212; A personal support worker (PSW) at a long-term care facility in Ontario is blowing the whistle on \u201cdire\u201d 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. \u201cTheir beds are two feet from each other.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[120,162,161,157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16675,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11683\/revisions\/16675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}