Queens Manor, Liverpool. Photo Ed Halverson

As the omicron variant runs rampant across Nova Scotia, keeping up morale for staff and residents at Queens Manor has become a full-time job.

The long-term care home in Liverpool was declared an outbreak facility after a staff member tested positive December 29 and the first resident followed on January 2.

Executive Director Andrew MacVicar says omicron is present throughout the community and his focus is to eliminate the stigma associated with a positive test among the staff.

“It’s possible that you could do everything right, which our staff are doing, and be, “the one” to bring it into the building when in reality, there will never be a “one” person who brings it into the building, in all likelihood, with the volume of viral activity that’s out there,” said MacVicar.

Long-term care homes were struggling to hire enough workers before the pandemic hit and MacVicar says the most recent outbreak has only made a tough situation worse.

“When you’re starting with sometimes bare-bones staffing, and you are removing a significant number of people with symptoms that would not have prevented them from working in the past, it significantly impacts your ability to fully staff your facility,” said MacVicar.

He says despite dealing with several staff off work because they have either tested positive or been a close contact of someone with a positive test, Queens Manor is still providing a high-level of care to their residents.

But backfilling those positions to care for residents means there is no staff available to train and monitor visitors coming to the facility.

Which is why Queens Manor is currently closed to all visitors except for residents undergoing end of life care.

MacVicar says decreased staff numbers means not even designated caregivers are permitted until the facility completes a two-week circuit breaker.

“We are putting our plan in place to reintroduce designated caregivers as soon as we can because they are an integral part of providing care here.”

MacVicar says Queens Manor is turning a corner as the first people to test positive return.

“As we have residents come off isolation from being positive and staff returning to work from being positive I think it’s a very important step towards realizing that we’re going to be okay and we can live with COVID-19, however that is defined in the future.”

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Photo Ed Halverson

Students across Nova Scotia will enjoy an even longer December holiday as the province announced the break will start Friday instead of next Tuesday the 21.

Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development Becky Druhan says the decision was not based on public health direction but is designed to relieve staffing pressures.

“We’re very grateful and pleased that Nova Scotians are following the public health directions to self-isolate when they’re close contacts. But some of those people are people who are in the school system and that means they’re unavailable to come in to teach, to support the school or to drive buses, if those are their roles. So, as a result of the numbers of people who are on self-isolation due to being close contacts, there are challenges with operating school,” said Druhan.

The department announced just last week that students would return to class two days later than planned, on January 6.

The reasoning was to allow families to monitor students for COVID-19 before they return to school, for public health to assess COVID-19 in the province, and staff to undertake further professional development to support their teaching, while also allowing more time for families to book vaccination appointments for their children.

Druhan says the extra time will allow public health officials to make the best plans for a safe return to school.

“One of the reasons for that is about giving public health some additional time to be able to make a determination about the epidemiology and what the situation is and to ensure we have that time to have really good decisions around what measures need to be in place coming back.,” said Druhan. “And so public health will be taking the time over the holidays to make those assessments. We’ll be working very closely with them to make sure that whatever new measures need to be in place when we come back in January are ready to go.”

The announcement to extend the school break comes as the province reports 178 new cases of coronavirus.

E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson

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