Toronto outlines plans for long-term care staffing as COVID-19 death toll climbs to 147

City officials have outlined the steps being taken to comply with a provincial order regarding long-term care homes, as Toronto's death toll from COVID-19 climbs to 147.

The provincial order introduced this week restricts all long-term care staff from working in more than one long-term care home, retirement home or health care setting beginning at 12:01 a.m. next Wednesday.

"Starting today, staff working in one of the city's 10 long-term care homes will have to sign a declaration confirming their decision regarding a single employer," Mayor John Tory said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

"For those unable to commit to the city, they will be placed on an unpaid leave of absence for the duration of the emergency order. Their position will remain secure."

Tory said the city is planning and preparing for changes in available staff as a result of the provincial order.

He said senior services and long-term care have already stopped all non-essential services and redirected resources to the essential long-term care operations.

Other steps include:

• Maximizing part-time front-line staff and using overtime to meet staffing needs during outbreaks.
• Hiring 50 nursing students and PSW-certified individuals to support and backfill personal support worker positions.
• Received 80 redeployed staff from elsewhere in the public service and other city divisions, with another 80 starting soon.
• Requested more redeployed through the emergency operation centre.

Tory saluted city staff, who he said have agreed to be redeployed to the locations where there have been outbreaks of COVID-19.

Toronto records 2,881 cases of COVID-19, 147 deaths

Meanwhile, Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto's medical officer of health, said Toronto has now recorded 2,881 cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak began, and 147 deaths.

She said there are now 230 patients in hospital, 88 of them in intensive care units.

More deaths at seniors' homes

Thursdayevening, Altamont Care Community confirmed the death of one of its workers at its Scarborough location.

"Today we received the difficult news of the passing of a much-loved and valued team member from Altamont Care Community," communications director Natalie Gokchenian said in a statement.

"On behalf of the entire team at Sienna Senior Living, we extend our deepest condolences to her family, loved ones, and colleagues."

Meanwhile, The hard-hit EatonvilleCare Centre in Etobicoke confirmed one more death due to COVID-19 on Thursday, bringing the total to 31. The number of positive cases is now 79, with 80 test results pending.

"Our home has been supportive of Public Health's decision to test all of our residents," wrote Executive Director Evelyn MacDonald in a statement.

"Through expanded testing, we will have a clearer picture of the scope of the outbreak within our home. We expect to get additional test results back over the coming days and, as always, we will personally call the families of any residents who are COVID-19 positive," the statement continued.

City launches its own COVID-19 tracking system

De Villa also announced that a new information system to track COVID-19 in Toronto is now online.

Known as the CoronavirusRapid Entry, Trace and Contact Management System, de Villa said it's the first of its kind in the province.

"This new web-based, secured system ... allows our team to quickly and easily document each individual case investigation efficiently, and share data with the provincial Ministry of Health," shesaid.

Previously, the city had been entering its COVID-19 case and contact tracing data into the provincial Integrated Information System (IFIS).

IFIS is a provincial information system that all local public health departments are required to use to report infectious disease information to the province.

"While IFIS has served us for many years, for the purposes of the current COVID-19 emergency, we at Toronto Public Health quickly realized that this provincial information system was not not well equipped to deal with the scale of the data we need to quickly input," de Villa said.

"When we realized these limitations and that we needed more nimble technology for our response, we quickly worked with our city partners to develop a new information technology tool to keep up with our evolving contact-tracing demands."