The COVID-19 outbreak that was declared at Au Chateau Home for the Aged on Nov. 15 appears to be contained to just two people and could be declared over as soon as this Sunday.
Director Jacques Dupuis says all staff and residents have undergone multiple tests – with another round slated for this week – and all results have come back negative, aside from the one affected resident.
“If all goes well – because right now our protocols, implementation plan and outbreak measures seem to be working very well because there’s been no spread – we’re going to be subject to testing (Nov. 24), we’ll probably get the all-clear by Friday and if no other cases come up – visitors, staff or residents – the outbreak should be declared over on Nov. 28,” he says.
An outbreak is declared in long-term care homes anytime there are two or more confirmed cases in residents, staff or visitors and the infection was likely spread in the facility. In this instance, Dupuis says a visitor tested positive through their rapid antigen testing and was sent to get a PCR test, which confirmed it. The home immediately implemented their outbreak plan, isolating everyone and then testing the resident who had received that visitor.
“Once we found out the resident was positive and the visitor was positive, we knew it was an outbreak in Section A, so we implemented our pandemic plan where we isolated the resident who was positive as well as the resident that was in the room with them,” says Dupuis. “We transferred them to our separate COVID area, to be taken care of separately, then we isolated Section A from the rest of the home.”
The day the outbreak was discovered, COVID-19 tests were run on all residents in Section A, as well as staff who had worked there in the past week. The following day, they tested all Au Chateau staff and residents. They did another round of testing on Thursday Nov. 18 as well.
Au Chateau adopted a mandatory vaccination policy for their employees on Sept. 16, and the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit says measures like that have helped limit what would have been a troubling outbreak a year ago.
