Hugs and hand squeezes are now possible at Tri-City senior care homes as families resume in-person visits with their loved ones amid loosened restrictions.
Except for facilities, such as Dufferin Care Centre in Coquitlam, where visitors are restricted due to an outbreak of COVID-19, long-term care homes and assisted living facilities are permitting up to two visitors and a child during scheduled social visits.
Instead of a sterile visit behind glass or two metres away, loved ones can now hold hands and hug, and take their loved ones off-site, provided that all public health orders and recommendations are followed.
The change, over a month in effect, has brought hundreds of families together across the Tri-Cities, including the family of Jim O’Friel, a resident of Eagle Ridge Manor in Port Moody, who was visited recently by his daughter, Elma Melus.
The change — from distanced communication to close contact — made a huge difference to Melus, when she finally got to see her father up close after 14 months of physical distance.
“To see his smile and the brightness in his eyes was absolutely amazing,” stated Melhus in a press release issued by Fraser Health Wednesday.
It’s been more than a month since the loosened restrictions were announced by Health Minister Adrian Dix, and come several months after Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie raised concerns about the impact of visitor restrictions on the quality of life for B.C. seniors.
In her report last November, Mackenzie noted that her office received more calls about visitation to long term care homes than any other issue since her office was established in 2014, with many people upset about not being able to provide personal care or spend time with their loved ones.
Before the pandemic, 55% of families were visiting their relatives in long-term care and assisted living facilties for an hour or more, several times per week if not daily.
Concerns about isolation — and challenges surrounding visiting family members who have dementia or who are dying — were raised by Mackenzie in November 2020. Tri-City News readers raised concerns, too, with one woman calling visits to her husband more like being in prison than a family reunion.
VACCINATION KEY TO RESUMPTION OF VISITATION
But with Phase One of the province’s vaccination program in long-term care homes complete, and B.C.’s vaccination program speeding up, Minister of Health Adrian Dix adjusted the visitation policy with looser rules beginning April 1.
Vaccination appears to be key to the new policy.
Since vaccination was started, the number of hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19 have dropped drastically at B.C. long-term care homes and assisted living facilities. Currently, just six seniors’ care facilities are experiencing an outbreak compared to dozens previously, with the ongoing outbreak at Dufferin Care Centre in Coquitlam the only one in Fraser Health.
Still, vaccination doesn’t mean visitors are free to come and go without any restrictions at all; numerous COVID-19 protocols are still in place.
Visitors must be screened for COVID-19 and infection protection measures — such as wearing a medical-grade mask and proper hand hygiene — are still required.
And, if there’s an outbreak, social visits are suspended.
That’s what happened at Dufferin Care Centre, where 16 people, mostly residents on a single floor, caught COVID-19 and two residents died, despite two doses of vaccine being given to residents and staff in January and February.
COVID-19 GOT INTO DUFFERIN CARE CENTRE IN COQUITLAM DESPITE VACCINATION
Fraser Health confirmed that eligible residents have already received their first and second shots. New residents are also offered vaccinations, and the health authority will even vaccinate people awaiting placement.
“We take every opportunity to immunize residents prior to their admission to long-term care, including providing immunizations to people who are awaiting placement,” a Fraser Health spokesperson stated in an email to the Tri-City News.
Still, it’s not known how COVID-19 entered the facility.
Fraser Health confirmed that new residents are tested for the virus but they do have to wait 16 weeks — four months — before their second shot, a requirement that has some Tri-City readers concerned.
One woman, whose mother was at Dufferin during the last outbreak at the facility in 2020, has questioned the provincial health guidelines to extend the period between doses for elderly people in long-term care homes.
“Because these are the most vulnerable people and the care homes have been hit the hardest, there should have been an exemption for the elderly from the four-month spacing,” the reader wrote.
Fraser Health’s top doc confirmed recently that the current vaccine protocol is “highly effective,” in curbing transmissions in long-term care and assisted living facilities, particularly in reducing hospitalizations and deaths.
But Dr. Victoria Lee also acknowledged the immunization rate in such facilities “isn’t 100%” and that those who were vaccinated but still got COVID-19 may have acquired the virus within the 14 to 21-day period before shots have taken effect.
Meanwhile, the BC Centre for Disease Control hasn’t updated its vaccine coverage by facility chart for the second dose. According to the website, 95% of the facility’s 155 residents had received their first dose by Feb. 15.
This is the second COVID-19 outbreak at Dufferin. By March 2020, the Dufferin Care Centre was, at the time, the site of the largest publicly acknowledged COVID-19 outbreak at a care home or assisted living facility in the Tri-Cities. Over 20 people were at one point infected at the facility, including 14 residents and eight staff.
Four people died of COVID-19 during last year’s outbreak; in the current outbreak, two people have died.
