COVID outbreak at Wakaw seniors home linked to four deaths

A COVID-19 outbreak at a Wakaw seniors home has left four people dead after spreading to every resident in four days.

Lakeview Pioneer Lodge acting administrator Wayne Nogier says the home declared an outbreak on Dec. 28, with two of the 44 residents showing flu symptoms.

When those COVID test results returned positive, every staff member and resident was tested for the virus. By Wednesday, Nogier said, all residents and at least “60 per cent” of the 70 workers were infected or isolating at home after showing symptoms.

“I’ve been doing this for quite a few years and I’ve never in my experience seen a virus that has spread this fast and with this sort of virulent type of activity,” Nogier said.

“All of the things that the medical health officers right across the country have been telling us about are the very things we experienced in the course of four days.”

Nogier said the rapid spread to all residents and a majority of the staff in less than a week surprised everyone involved.

The seniors home reported two deaths on Wednesday, but Nogier said two more residents have died since then.

A majority of the residents and staff are not experiencing symptoms.

Nogier is one of many staff members who were called in from other communities to help since the entire management team is either sick or isolating at home.

Lakeview Pioneer Lodge is owned by Wakaw and several other rural municipalities. It is operated under an affiliate contract with the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

Nogier called the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s assistance to keep adequate staffing levels “a godsend.”

“We literally could not get this work done without that incident command structure and the responsiveness of the organization,” Nogier said.

The province’s Opposition party is expecting more of provincial leaders to ensure outbreaks like the one in Wakaw don’t happen to other facilities.

“This government keeps doing the same thing and expecting different results. If conditions in our care homes were deplorable before the pandemic, they are downright dangerous now,” NDP Health Critic Vicki Mowat said in a news release.

Mowat is calling for new measures like hiring 300 continuing care aides mentioned in the Throne Speech, increased provincial oversight at care homes and having no more than two residents in a room.

While Nogier couldn’t exactly say how COVID-19 first entered Lakeview Pioneer Lodge, he said it’s highly likely it entered either through a staff member coming to work or a resident leaving and returning from a doctor’s appointment.

He said the difficulty in managing the spread of the outbreak was instantly complicated by the high number of residents with “higher-end” dementia who don’t respond well to isolation.

“A single infected dementia resident that isn’t showing any symptoms can infect a lot of people just by the surfaces that they’re touching,” Nogier said, adding a similar note about spread amongst staff.

“(It could be) something as simple as a shared pen and then rubbing their eyes or mouth afterwards,” he said. “We’ve been at this now for a year. Our people have been tired for months and fatigue occurs and this is the result.”