{"id":12595,"date":"2020-04-23T06:57:23","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T10:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/?p=12595"},"modified":"2020-05-19T20:59:46","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T00:59:46","slug":"a-mobile-testing-team-swabbed-every-resident-in-a-toronto-nursing-home-for-covid-19-what-they-found-is-saving-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/a-mobile-testing-team-swabbed-every-resident-in-a-toronto-nursing-home-for-covid-19-what-they-found-is-saving-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"A mobile testing team swabbed every resident in a Toronto nursing home for COVID-19. What they found is \u2018saving lives\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"A<\/img><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Kate<\/img><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By <\/span>Kate Allen<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span>Science and Technology Reporter<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Thu., April 23, 2020<\/span><\/span><\/span>timer<\/i>6 min. read<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Last Saturday, a team of doctors and staff from Women\u2019s College Hospital pulled up in cabs to Kensington Gardens long-term-care home in downtown Toronto. They passed through a digital temperature checkpoint and other screening measures, and proceeded to the home\u2019s family room. <\/p>\n

Within minutes, the team converted the family room \u2014 a homey space furnished with a big dining table and overstuffed sofas, where in pre-pandemic times residents gathered with loved ones to celebrate birthdays and share meals \u2014 into a \u201cclean room,\u201d wiping down surfaces with medical-grade disinfectant.<\/p>\n

The Women\u2019s College team laid out their supplies for the day. For themselves, they brought full-body personal protective equipment, including masks, gowns, visors, gloves and booties. For the Kensington Gardens residents, they brought a huge box of swabs.<\/p>\n

Over the next five hours, the team swabbed every resident from two floors of Kensington Gardens\u2019 South building and submitted the samples to public health be tested for COVID-19<\/a>. It was the hospital\u2019s fourth mission to the long-term-care home, which \u2014 along with more than 100 others in the province \u2014 is struggling with an outbreak of the novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n

Before the testing blitz Kensington Gardens had four known cases, but worrying signs the disease had spread.<\/p>\n

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The home is now one of a handful in the province that has undergone universal COVID-19 testing. Nearly all residents and more than 100 staff have been swabbed at Kensington Gardens, with the remaining staff to be tested in the coming days.<\/p>\n

The results, while scary for families because of the jump in cases, have helped the home understand and control its outbreak. Among more than 25 new positives in residents and staff, the testing blitz found one resident who was then asymptomatic and who lived on a unit with no other known cases, so wasn\u2019t under outbreak protocols \u2014 but now is. <\/p>\n

John Yip, the CEO of Kensington Health, says the ability to test so widely with the hospital\u2019s support is \u201csaving lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the province released a new directive calling for all residents and staff in long-term-care homes to be tested for COVID-19. Public health officials acknowledged earlier this week that while the broader community epidemic has peaked, cases and deaths in vulnerable long-term care and other congregate settings are still accelerating<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Geriatricians and other experts praised Wednesday\u2019s move, calling it long overdue. But opposition critics also noted that Premier Doug Ford had called for universal testing in long-term care two weeks ago. Ford said Wednesday there are 78,000 residents of long-term care in Ontario, and 56,000 staff: testing all of them will require a massive deployment of resources. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult and sad what\u2019s happening in some of the long-term-care facilities in the province right now,\u201d said Dr. Danielle Martin, executive vice-president and chief medical executive at Women\u2019s College Hospital. \u201cAnd I think hospitals and health regions are all realizing this is where we need to be putting our effort and energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because you don\u2019t work in or run a long-term-care facility doesn\u2019t mean that long-term care is not your problem: right now long-term care is everyone\u2019s job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kensington Gardens and Women\u2019s College Hospital were connected before the pandemic through a program at Women\u2019s called LTC+, a program to provide virtual consultations and care to nursing homes and help avoid lengthy and unnecessary hospital stays.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why organizational partnerships like this are so important,\u201d says Martin. \u201cWhen there is a crisis or a problem, you have these existing relationships you can draw on.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"The<\/img><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Kensington Gardens discovered its first COVID-19 case in late March, a resident in its North building, one of two buildings the home operates on Brunswick Ave. The resident was hospitalized but has since recovered. <\/p>\n

Then, in April, three more residents and two staff tested positive on a North building unit that is home to residents with the most severe cognitive impairments. Nursing homes across the province have struggled to contain outbreaks in units like these, because it is difficult to ensure people with advanced dementia comply with social distancing and other isolation measures.<\/p>\n

More residents on the unit were showing mild symptoms, says Yip.<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic health, I don\u2019t want to sound critical \u2014 they\u2019re well-intended,\u201d he says. \u201cThey just couldn\u2019t move quickly enough. They\u2019re dealing with a lot.\u201d <\/p>\n

At Women\u2019s College, meanwhile, doctors running the hospital\u2019s onsite COVID-19 assessment centre recognized the need for mobile testing teams, which could be deployed to high-risk settings that have become ground zero for Ontario\u2019s epidemic, including long-term-care homes and shelters. (Danielle Martin notes that other hospitals, including Michael Garron in Toronto\u2019s east end, have similar initiatives.) <\/p>\n

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Martin phoned John Yip and described their mobile assessment teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said, this is what we\u2019re planning on doing. Do you need our help?\u201d Yip recalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Yes.\u2019 She said, \u2018When?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Now.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Within 24 hours, Women\u2019s College had assembled a mobile testing team for Kensington. They staff these teams by sending an email blast to all physicians; neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, family doctors and more have volunteered for the mobile and the onsite assessment clinics. <\/p>\n

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\"In<\/img><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On Easter Sunday, the Women\u2019s College mobile team swabbed 43 residents and multiple staff from the affected floor. They came back two days later to swab the rest of the building\u2019s 141 residents and 116 staff. (One resident declined; the doctors say they work hard to communicate that they are there to help even though their multiple layers of protective gear can seem scary.)<\/p>\n

In total, 22 residents and eight staff in the building tested positive. One resident tested positive who lives on a different unit of the floor with the outbreak, and who was then not showing any symptoms; the positive result allowed the home to lock down that whole floor and put outbreak protocols in place early, limiting the chances of infecting others. Two residents of the other unit on that floor have since died. <\/p>\n

Last Friday and Saturday, the Women\u2019s College mobile team returned to test the other 195 residents of the home\u2019s South building. (That includes my father: I learned about Kensington Gardens\u2019 partnership with Women\u2019s College Hospital through an email update to family members. Both organizations agreed to let me join them for part of the process.)<\/p>\n

Of those results, 126 have come back, and all have been negative. (My father\u2019s results are pending.) Kensington Gardens limited the movement of staff between the two buildings weeks ago, long before a provincial order to ban staff from working at multiple institutions, which came into effect Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Dr. Suvendrini Lena, a neurologist from Women\u2019s College who volunteered with Saturday\u2019s mobile testing team, noted later that it can be hard to detect illness in elderly people with dementia at the best of times.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not always easy to pick up unusual presentations of illness,\u201d Lena said. \u201cAnd this illness is new. So how can personal support care workers be asked to pick up unusual symptoms of an illness they\u2019ve never seen before? It can\u2019t be left up to subtleties like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why you need to have blanket screening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin notes, however, that \u201cto swab a whole floor or a whole unit is a really big deal,\u201d an enormous undertaking that requires both staff and resources like personal protective equipement and swabs. As residents are falling ill, so are staff; short-staffed units are working overtime to provide feeding, toileting and other basic care. <\/p>\n

Yip says the care home\u2019s pre-existing partnership with the hospital has \u201cpaid dividends.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201dThese partnerships that Women\u2019s College has started should not go away, should only be expanded on post-COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Kate<\/img><\/p>\n

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Kate Allen<\/a> is a Toronto-based reporter covering science and technology. Follow her on Twitter: @katecallen<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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By Kate AllenScience and Technology ReporterThu., April 23, 2020timer6 min. readLast Saturday, a team of doctors and staff from Women\u2019s College Hospital pulled up in cabs to Kensington Gardens long-term-care home in downtown Toronto. They passed through a digital temperature checkpoint and other screening measures, and proceeded to the home\u2019s family room. Within minutes, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12596,"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\/12595"}],"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=12595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16226,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12595\/revisions\/16226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}