As B.C. experiences rapid growth in the number of COVID-19 cases, there are renewed calls to implement routine testing of staff and residents in long term care homes.
BC Care Providers Association CEO Terry Lake says currently when a staff member or resident tests positive, the medical health officer has to decide whether to test everyone at the facility.
“When you get a staff member that has tested positive, you’re not sure if they had in fact been at work when they were asymptomatic and in fact passed the virus on,” he said on the NL Noon Report.
“So – you know – we certainly wonder whether we shouldn’t out of an abundance of caution be having a more widespread testing protocol here in British Columbia.”
Lake says currently only B.C., Alberta and Manitoba don’t have routine testing protocols in place.
“It’s baffling to me why we haven’t adopted this technology to use as a screening tool in long term care, which I think would lower the risk of staff taking the virus into care homes, and also would provide greater security and safety for staff and for residents and for family members going in and helping out,” he said.
Catching cases early is key in preventing outbreaks from getting out of control. Lake says routine testing protocols could prevent nursing homes from having to completely lock down when a case is discovered.
“The only option you have when there is an outbreak and that could be a staff member that was never at work when they tested positive is to lock the nursing home down,” he added. “We’ve had 45-hundred people pass away without having their families close to them as they are used to. You can imagine spending the last days of your life separated from your family.”
Visits are currently forbidden at The Hamlets in Westsyde in Kamloops after a staff member there tested positive for COVID-19. Since then, no other staff or residents have had symptoms or tested positive.