7 in hospital as P.E.I. announces more cases, recoveries of COVID-19

There are seven people on P.E.I.in hospital including one in the Intensive Care Unit being treated for COVID-19, the Chief Public Health Office said in a news release Monday.

Dr. Heather Morrison announced 231 new cases of COVID-19 and 378 new recoveries as of 8 a.m.

COVID-19 testing clinics at Charlottetown and SlemonPark reached capacity and stopped taking new arrivals as of 2 p.m. The clinics will reopen Tuesday at 8 a.m.

As well, the mobile testing clinic will move from Montague to the O'Leary hospital on Tuesday due to increased demand in western P.E.I. It will also be on site in O'Leary on Wednesday and Friday. It will be in Montague on Thursday.

It will be openfrom 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. each day.

The CPHO also provided an update on the outbreaks across P.E.I.

• Atlantic Baptist long-term care facility: Six new cases, 25 total.
• Garden Home long-term care facility: Two new cases, 15 total.
• Miscouche Villa community care facility: No new cases,nine total.
• Early learning and childcare centres: 16 centres with cases,10are fully open, three are open with reduced or modified capacity and three are closed.
• Shelters and outreach services: Five new cases, 15 total,among individuals who regularly access shelters and outreach services in Charlottetown.
• Provincial Correctional Centre: No new cases.

Cindy Campbell, health-care manager of Miscouche Villa, said there is only one active case at the home and they are hoping that person will be fully recovered soon.

Residents 'pretty co-operative'

She said the cases in the facility were mild, with residents having runny noses and being more tired than usual.

"A lot of the residents that I have here are mental-health [patients] and they run from ages 23 to 86 and it is really hard to deal with that kind of a crowd in the age group," she said.

"I figured that I would have trouble isolating and wearing the masks and, you know, the distancing, but a lot of them were pretty co-operative, we did really well."

The outbreaks have caused staff at somelong-term care facilities to go into isolation, and the P.E.I. government's plan to address staffing shortages caused some concerns recently.

Over the weekend, the province reached out to workers in various government departments, includingP.E.I. school staff, asking if any would be available to help at long-term care homes.

Karen Jackson,president of P.E.I.'s Union of Public Sector Employees, which represents many long-term care home workers,questioned what work peoplewith no training or experience will be qualified to do.

"I, as a health-care worker myself, would be fairly uncomfortable with having someone come in with no training," she said.

"There's lots of safety issues like with transfers, lifting, repositioning patients, feeding patients that have difficulty swallowing. There's just a lot of risk factors. Our members are professionals. They've been trained professionally to do this, and it's not something you learn overnight."

About 50 answered call to help

P.E.I.'s health minister on Monday told CBCNewsno one will be asked to do any work that goes beyond their qualifications.

He said so farabout 50 people have offered to help.Half that many have actually been hired to work so far, most of them substitute teachers and nursing students from UPEI.

P.E.I's Official Opposition has questioned why government isn't asking the military for assistance at long-term care homes, as other provinces have done to help dealwith worker shortages throughout the pandemic

Health P.E.I. said as of Jan. 12,95.9 per cent of eligible Island residents age 12 years and older have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 92.6 per cent are fully vaccinated with two doses.

More than 56per cent of children age 5-11 years have received their first dose.

There are currently 1,934 active cases of COVID-19 and there have been 4,401 cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Over the last seven days there have been an average of 215 cases per day.