A total of 102 of Sainte-Dorothées residents died from COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic. By April, two-thirds of the home's employees had become infected.
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Poor management is responsible for a high number of deaths at a Laval long-term care home during the first wave of the pandemic, according to a union advisor at CSN.
Gilles Tremblay, the advisor, made the statement in his testimony during the public inquiry into deaths at long-term care homes by coroner Géhane Kamel, which is focused on CHSLD Sainte-Dorothée this week.
Tremblay, who represents orderlies at the Laval health authority, blamed the provincial government for “sending everyone to CHSLDs” to free up spaces in hospitals at the start of the pandemic. He said in the middle of the first wave, hardly anyone from long-term care homes was transferred to hospitals.
“But the hospital was empty, it was a ghost hospital,” Tremblay said, adding that the refusal to send the residents of care homes to the hospital constituted an “ageicide.”
“Why didn’t we give them the chance to have the best ventilators and the best care?” Tremblay asked. “Why were they not entitled to intensive care?”
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Low on oxygen
The vice-president of the union of nurses, respiratory therapists and auxiliary nurses of Laval, Déreck Cyr, said the maximum amount of oxygen in ventilators for COVID-19 patients had been reduced to avoid producing aerosols.
On April 3, 2020, nurses used their “right of refusal” — which allows them not to perform a task endangering their health — and demanded they be given N95 masks if they were to approach residents whose devices produced aerosols. No N95s were sent to Sainte-Dorothée.
“The doctor said they were indeed right,” but that they had to “reduce the oxygen” even if it was harming the patient, Cyr said.
“It would have been much easier to provide N95s,” he said, adding that managers blamed the ministry for the decision not to hand them out.
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During that time, no CHSLD doctors would go to the home; they all made their diagnoses over the phone.
A total of 102 of Sainte-Dorothée’s residents died from COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic. By April 2020, two-thirds of the home’s employees had to stay home because they’d become infected.
Tremblay also denounced the slowness with which the Laval health authority implemented public health measures during the first wave of the pandemic.
He said he asked for a testing centre at Sainte-Dorothée on March 20, but the mass testing effort only took place two weeks later, on April 3 for residents and April 7 for employees. A total of 105 residents tested positive.
Tremblay criticized the employer for having refused protective equipment for a long time. In fact, several employees from Sainte-Dorothée who testified over the last two weeks reported that in March, their superiors had ordered them to wear only a surgical mask while entering the rooms of infected patients.
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The health authority’s supply manager, Martin Delage, confirmed in his testimony Tuesday that the warehouse “had never been out of stock,” despite a handful of times when they neared that possibility.
The coroner’s inquest aims to examine the deaths of elderly or vulnerable people in residential settings during the COVID-19 pandemic, which account for half of the victims of the first wave. Its objective is not to place blame, but to form recommendations to avoid future tragedies.
Six CHSLDs and retirement homes were chosen as a sample, with one death examined at each establishment.
This week’s hearings are focusing on the April 3, 2020 death of Anna José Maquet at Sainte-Dorothée.
A national component will then be examined.
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2021-06-23 01:25:52Z
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