On Wednesday, Stephanson planned to announce $ 15 million in new county funding for personal care homes in River Park Gardens, a nursing home in Winnipeg’s Royalwood neighborhood. The event was moved to the Manitoba legislature due to the COVID-19 epidemic at home. The province informed the media about the change of place one hour before the scheduled announcement. The severity of this epidemic is unknown, as the province no longer reveals how many people have been infected in care homes. As part of Manitoba’s two-week strategy of publishing statistics such as hospitalization and number of cases on a weekly basis – and not every day – the province has stopped revealing how many people in personal care homes have been infected with the virus.

Weekly data do not include infection numbers

CBC News made repeated requests for this data over a period of three days, but the province refused to disclose it. Instead, the county noted the weekly publication of COVID-19 epidemiological reports listing the total number of COVID-19 cases, but not the number of people infected with these outbreaks. This means that two cases could indicate four sick elderly people. They could also indicate 400. There is no way to know if personal care providers do not publish the data themselves. Some, such as the Saul & Claribel Simkin Center in the Linden Ridge neighborhood of Winnipeg, disclose this information cautiously. Inform families of 16 infections on April 3rd. “I do not think it is a coincidence that we are seeing an increase in our cases with the end of the restrictions that were in place before,” Simkin’s care director Alanna Kull said in an interview, referring to the end of Mandatory Indoor Mask and Mandatory Quarantine for patients with COVID on March 15. The Prime Minister of Manitoba, Heather Stephenson, said that she was comfortable with the families of the residents in personal care homes being the ones who knew about the scale of the epidemics. (John Woods / The Canadian Press)
“I can not say 100%, but obviously we make this correlation here, that we see staff getting sick, we see visitors get sick and we see residents who are sick now.” Infected staff and guests had no symptoms when they entered the care home and revealed their illnesses as soon as possible, Kull said. The severity of the symptoms among residents is also less severe than it was during a January epidemic, he added. However, he said it would be better if the province restored key pandemic measures, such as the mask order. In the absence of provincial data disclosure, it is unclear how many residents of personal care homes have been infected in Manitoba. As of Friday, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority had recorded 267 out-of-cases infections in eight personal care homes, but that data is cumulative and not current, said Bobby-Joe Stanley. Even the provincial list of the total number of cases is not up to date. This list is published every Thursday for the week ending last Saturday. It is unclear whether the River Park Gardens outbreak will be included in this list, as it was only mentioned after the government planned to hold a press conference at the care home. NDP leader Wab Kinew has accused the government of trying to pretend COVID-19 is over. “The reality of the pandemic continues to intervene and remind us that it is very much here. And I can not think of a clearer example for computers that they had to carry out the press conference because of an epidemic in a personal care home as proof that the pandemic has not it’s over, “he said.

Families know

Prime Minister Heather Stephenson described the new outbreak as “unfortunate”, but said people who need to know about home care cases – residents’ families – are being informed. “Information is passed on to those who need it when they need it,” he said. Stephenson defended the weekly data announcements as having the “relevant information” that Manitoba residents need to determine the COVID-19 risk. He said Manitobans could draw more than one snapshot of COVID-19 once a week, in line with trends, rather than the long-standing practice of releasing case numbers, hospitalizations and epidemic reports on a daily basis. Manitoba Public Health said in a statement that individual care homes are managing their own situation with regard to the COVID-19 epidemics and are responding quickly to cases. “Their priority is an immediate internal response to their residents in addition to alerting families, updating any internal protocols as required and ensuring that those who need to know have the information they need,” the statement said.