Building on our advocacy efforts and the open letter we shared yesterday, today we continued to call attention to the urgent need to better protect residents, nurses and other frontline staff in Ontario's long term care homes. Our CEO, Dianne Martin, was on Global News 640 talking to John Oakley about how nurses are feeling in long term care. Listen to the interview here.
Q&A with Dianne Martin We're looking forward to answering your question tonight at 8pm on our Facebook Live session. Tune in at facebook.com/wearepracticalnurses
Urgent Jobs During COVID-19 Thank you again to all the RPNs who signed up to help meet the growing demand for nurses during COVID-19. To help connect available RPNs with employers, we've launched a COVID-19 Staff Needed section on our website where we will post requests that come our way.
If you know any employers who are looking for RPNs, please direct them to this website where they can sharing postings.
Key Provincial Updates and Resources for Health Professionals This afternoon, Ontario announced plans to extend school and child care closures until May 4th. During this time, materials will continue to be added to Learn at Home on a regular basis to provide new content for students.
Changes were made to the case definition including, clarifying swabbing requirements, simplifying laboratory confirmation of COVID-19 infection, and eliminating repeat testing to clear certain cases managed at home.
The Ministry of Health is continuing efforts to increase provincial lab testing capacity, which has increased by over 150% to approximately 4,800 tests per day as of March 29th and reduce the backlog of tests, which has decreased by a third since March 25th.
As we noted in yesterday's update, the Chief Medical Officer of Health issued Directive 5 for public hospitals as well as a joint statementwith the Ontario Nurses’ Association and the Ontario Hospital Association on health and safety measures in hospitals.
The Ministry has updated other directives to reflect language in Directive 5 and make other noted changes:
Directive 1 to Health Care Providers (minor updates): This replaces the directive issued on March 12 to reflect language changes in Directive 5.
Directive 3
to Long-Term Care Homes (significant updates): This replaces the directive issued on March 22, 2020 to reflect language changes in Directive 5 and clarify additional recommendation around screening and outbreak management.
New guidance documents for Talking to Children About the Pandemic, Funeral and Bereavement Services, as well as new resources for Ontarians Experiencing Mental Health and Addictions Issues have been developed and uploaded to the ministry website
Key Federal Updates Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the government would be investing $2B to purchase more personal protective equipment including millions of masks and thousands of ventilators. For more information, we encourage you to visit theGovernment of Canada
website.
Daily Reports
The Ministry has updated its reporting structure and now provides additional demographic details about the cases. To view these additional details: click here
As of 10:30AM today, Ontario reported 1,966 confirmed cases, 534 resolved cases, 33 deaths and 4280 currently under investigation with lab results pending.
Click Here to read the latest Ministry of Health Daily Report **Please note, these reports are intended for health professionals only and we request that you not share this with the public.
World Health Organization Situation Reports
are also available here
In the News For an interactive map tracking all cases across Canada and internationally, click here
Below are some key stories from today that may be of interest
to our members:
We will continue to monitor this situation and keep you updated as more information becomes available. Thank you for the important work that you're doing and the sacrifices you're making to keep Ontarians safe. We appreciate everything that you're doing each and every day.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact Tiff Blair at tblair@werpn.com
Sincerely,
WeRPN Team
WeRPN 5025 Orbitor Drive Building 5, Suite 200 Mississauga, Ontario L4W 4Y5