The Province is making COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for all in-home staff, support workers, students, and volunteers at Long Term Care (LTC) homes by November 15th.
LTC Minister Rod Phillips says we can also expect expanded inspections of homes and redirecting provincial resources to enhance and audit existing testing in homes.
“Right now we’re trying to keep that delicate balance,” said Minister of Long Term Care Rod Phillips at a press conference Friday. “We need to protect our residents, we need to protect our staff, we need to protect the safety of these homes from COVID-19, but we also want to make sure that we maintain the quality of life. So, at this stage we are focusing on staff – again, the epidemiological reports would indicate that unvaccinated staff are a significant source, and of course, we are not seeing widespread outbreaks here in Ontario, but to the extent we are, when we look at that data, we see that those unvaccinated staff are one of the significant causes.”
Vaccination rates of staff in many homes are not high enough in the face of the risk posed by the Delta variant, and this is putting vulnerable residents at risk. There is one exemption – it’s if a staff member has a valid medical exemption. To ensure the health and safety of staff and residents, the Province says mandating vaccination for in-home staff has now become essential, and homes are now required to meet the following requirements:
- Staff, support workers, students, and volunteers will have until November 15, 2021 to show proof that they have received all required doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, or to show proof of a valid medical exemption.
- Staff who do not have all required doses or a valid medical exemption by the deadline will not be able to enter a long-term care home to work.
- Newly hired staff will be required to be fully vaccinated before they begin working in a home unless they have a valid medical exemption.
- Homes will begin randomly testing fully vaccinated individuals, including staff, caregivers and visitors, to help detect possible breakthrough cases of COVID-19 as early as possible.
In addition to adding randomized testing of vaccinated individuals, homes will continue to regularly test individuals who are not fully vaccinated. The ministry will leverage provincial testing resources to inspect and audit these results by sending testing teams into homes to validate the results that homes have been reporting to the province. The ministry will also step up rigorous inspections of homes’ infection, prevention and control measures.
These new measures are the latest tools among a suite of actions the Ministry of Long-Term Care has taken to protect residents in long-term care, including:
- rigorous inspections to reinforce infection prevention and control
- regularly testing all individuals who are not fully vaccinated
- providing a COVID-19 vaccine promotion toolkit available in 12 languages
- organizing mobile clinics at homes with lower vaccination rates and homes experiencing outbreaks
- providing homes with support so they can administer vaccines themselves in a timely manner
- working to increase the hours of direct care for residents to an average of four hours per day by 2024-25
- collecting more accurate vaccination data at the home level
- offering third doses to long-term care residents. As of September 30, 64 per cent of residents have already received their third dose.
Fully vaccinated staff will continue to be able to work in more than one long-term care home, retirement home or other health service provider setting.
Homes will continue to be required to track and report on the implementation of their policies, including overall staff immunization rates. To promote transparency, the Ministry of Long-Term Care is publicly posting long-term care home staff vaccination rates. To protect staff privacy, individual immunization status is not shared with the province.
Photo via Rod Phillips Twitter Account