By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
Northumberland County has been blessed with a relatively-low incidence of COVID-19 cases and no deaths, Northumberland Hills Hospital president and chief executive officer Linda Davis said at Wednesday’s virtual Ontario Health Team-Northumberland COVID-19 forum.
“This is due in no small part to the exceptional way that Northumberland residents have listened to and followed public-health advice,” Davis said.
Panelists at the event represented five sectors of the Ontario Health Team-Northumberland: Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge District Health Unit Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Lynn Noseworthy (public-health sector), Northumberland County chief administrative officer Jennfier Moore (municipal-services sector), Lakeview Family Health Team executive director Wendy Parker (primary-care sector) and Community Care Northumberland executive director Trish Baird (community-care sector), as well as Davis (hospital sector).
The Ontario Health Team-Northumberland is one of the province’s first 24 OHTs, a partnership representing a number of partners in each sector, as well as patients and caregivers. Wednesday’s event – the team’s first virtual forum – was meant to share information about the practices implemented and partnerships formed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the pandemic took shape, Davis said, NHH responded on a number of fronts, such as creating capacity by deferring all but the most essential and urgent services, implementing screening procedures at all entrances, creating one-way pathways within the hospital for those who did require care, collaborating with the health unit and Northumberland paramedics in setting up COVID-19 assessment clinics at NHH and in Trent Hills, working with community partners to ensure adequate supplies of personal protective equipment, shifting community mental health services to virtual platforms wherever possible, and continuously monitoring provincial directives. They created a respiratory unit and expanded their capacity to accommodate 90 COVID-19 patients if necessary.
“We were prepared for the worst and, to date, have not had the high volumes of COVID-positive patients seen in other parts of the province,” Davis said.
Dr. Noseworthy said the news of the virus began coming in at the end of December.
“By the end of January, we saw the first case in Canada. On Friday, March 13, we saw our first case in Northumberland County,” the doctor listed.
“The timeline illustrates how quickly things escalated, and the world changed for all of us.”
The health unit began ramping up its preparations in January, guided by teleconferences with provincial officials, and began answering hundreds of calls from everyone from members of the public to municipal and school-board officials.
They also cancelled as many services as they could to divert staff to the COVID preparations.
“Most of our 135 staffers are working solely on pandemic response,” she said.
“Many of our staff now work on care and contact management, a lengthy process which involves contacting every confirmed case and reviewing everywhere they went and every person they were in contact with in the past 48 hours, before their infection began.”
Each will be evaluated, she added, to determine if self-isolation is necessary (in which case they will be watched for symptoms).
“Unfortunately, we learned some people who could be infectious were not self-isolating,” she added. Relevant provisions of the Health Promotion and Protection Act were invoked to give her the power to seek fines for these individuals.
In Northumberland County, Dr. Noseworthy said, there have been 14 confirmed cases, only one of which took place in a long-term-care home. At present, 12 high-risk individuals are being monitored.
“I have been in public health for 30 years, and I have never experienced anything like it,” she stated.
Moore said her responsibilities as head of an upper-tier municipality include paramedic services and the county’s long-term-care home.
The pandemic coincided with the launch of the paramedics’ Community Paramedicine program, she noted. They continue to deliver the outreach that is part of the program, and that now includes help with COVID-19 testing in collaboration with key community partners as well as response in cases where individuals experience symptoms.
At the Golden Plough Lodge, provincial directives are followed to ensure staff and resident well-being. The facility was closed to visitors on March 14, and there soon followed active screening, isolation protocols in certain cases, ensuring adequate PPE supplies and enhanced sanitation practices.
Social services provided through the county include serving the homeless through Transition House. They opened up a satellite location at Cobourg Collegiate Institute to ensure the recommended distancing protocols could be observed. And food security is reinforced through the Food 4 All Warehouse that supplies food banks and other distribution networks.
Parker noted that local primary-care providers have continued to serve the community through the Community Health Centre (based in Port Hope) and three Family Health Team organizations.
New model-of-care directives from the College of Physicians and Surgeons are being adopted, including an enhanced focus on PPE and sustainability planning that includes staggered schedules and working-from-home measures. Virtual platforms and on-line consultations are being instituted wherever possible, and community outreach in support of long-term-care facilities and retirement homes is being undertaken.
On behalf of the Community Health Centre, Duff Sprague reported that they do open each day and primary-care providers are on-site for urgent care. Their dental program operates for emergencies, and many of their staff concentrate on preparing and delivering food baskets (more than 60 a week) for clients with food-security issues. They also provide one hot meal each week for Transition House. Programs such as counselling and diabetes education are happening by phone.
At this time, Parker reminds everyone to continue to rely on his or her primary-care physician or nurse-practitioner in times of need. The result might be a telehealth consultation or visit by phone, but the important thing is not to neglect one’s own health if there is a concern that is not COVID-related.
Davis echoed this plea on behalf of hospitals. In fact, she said, emergency rooms are far less crowded than usual just now, as people take to heart the risk of encountering someone with coronavirus.
Baird said the focus of Community Care offices these days is primarily to ensure vital services are available to vulnerable individuals, such as meal and grocery delivery, medication delivery, essential medical transportation, personal-distress alarm monitoring, hospice services and reassurance calls. They have had to curtail the involvement of their volunteers to ensure their well-being – for example, the hot-to-your-door Meals On Wheels deliveries have been replaced with the delivery of frozen meals (more than 800 a week). Anyone who needs this kind of service can contact 211 to be connected to whatever resources are still available in the community.
Questions e-mailed and telephoned in expanded on the local COVID-19 picture, such as the number of tests performed in Northumberland to date. That would be 2,744, Davis estimated, or about 2.3% of the county’s population.
Of the county’s 16 long-term-care and retirement home, she also estimated, they are about two-thirds of the way through the testing involved with their staff and residents.
Questions about masks brought Dr. Noseworthy’s advice that they are mainly for those times when one cannot be sure of being able to maintain appropriate social distancing, and her reminder that they are protection not to safeguard the wearer but for the wearer to avoid spreading the contagion in the event they are infected but asymptomatic.
Wearers should keep two things in mind, she stressed – make every effort to avoid touching their faces, and wash the masks regularly to keep them clean and as sanitary as possible.
And when all is said and done, she added, it’s far more important to stay home as much as possible and away from other people.
Northumberland County’s tourism sector is a vibrant one, but the numbers of people that visit each summer are a concern, one person pointed out. Moore said she can’t speak for any individual municipalities, which are making their own plans, but Northumberland tourism is getting the message out that this is not the best time to visit.
“We look forward to tourists coming to our community – maybe not now, but when things are settled down a little bit,” she said.
With the low Northumberland numbers, one questioner wondered, will it be possible to relax social restrictions soon? No sooner than anywhere else in the province, Dr. Noseworthy said, given that COVID-19 is contagious in the asymptomatic stage before anyone knows he or she may have it.
That goes for you and for anyone you may come into contact with, she warned – the infection is spread, a few days pass where no one is the wiser and, in the interim, who knows how many people you’ve come in touch with.
Another reason for continued caution is the fact that about 62% of Ontario’s cases are in the Greater Toronto area, a mere half-hour’s drive from the Northumberland border.
“You may have to stay apart from your loved ones for a longer period of time, until infections throughout the province are decreased significantly,” she predicted.
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
