Dr. Nicola Mercer outlines new guidelines to protect long-term care homes from 2nd wave of COVID-19

Fewer trips outside long-term care homes, tighter restrictions on visitors and no in-person tours of facilities those are among the new guidelines forowners and operators of long-term care and retirement homesin Guelph, Wellington County and Dufferin County.

The measures laid out by Dr. Nicola Mercer, the CEO and medical officer of health for Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, areprovide directions to keep residents safe during the second wave of COVID-19.

"Our long-term care and retirement homes are important, supportive environments and we must do all we can to support them," Mercer said.

"In providing these new directions, my goal is to protect one of our most vulnerable populations by limiting exposure to COVID-19 as much as possible while ensuring residents can still access essential services in the community, get the care they need from families and caregivers and maintain emotional and physical wellbeing."

Public healthsays it is working closely with these facilities to reduce the risk of the virus to this vulnerable population.

The guidelines from Mercer include:

• Residents will be restricted to one general visitor and one essential visitor per resident at a time.
• There will be fewer trips outside the home for residents and those trips will be focused on medical appointments, compassionate situations and other essential purposes.
• Tours of facilities will move from in-person to virtual.
• Social activities will be limited to ones where resident safety can be maintained through physical distancing, adhering to infection control measures, enhanced environmental cleaning and face coverings for residents and staff.

Number of cases per week is 'concerning'

Mercer said a number of long-term care homes had reached out to her prior to Thanksgiving, expressing concern about the increasing rate of COVID-19 in the community.

"If you look at our rates, especially the city of Guelph and in the county of Dufferin, we are noticing that those rates and number of cases per week per 100,000 people is certainly becoming a little bit more concerning," Mercer told CBC News

"As we've been following those rates, we recognize that there's an important need to ensure that our most vulnerable population is protected."

Mercer made it clear that there is no lockdown.

Instead, she said, "we've just started to tighten up some of the higher risk measures that are occurring in the homes in order to prevent the transmission of this virus."