Visitation rules relaxed, but policies vary
Care-home residents and acute-care patients can designate six people as visitors, starting Monday
Elaine Hartery loves her mother dearly, but says the isolation she has experienced since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March is almost a fate worse than death.
“For her to think she may have to go through this the fall, when the second wave hits, I’d just as soon she was gone with dad,” Hartery said in an interview Tuesday.
The Southern Shore resident expressed her frustrations to The Telegram after saying last week that she was going to hold a demonstration in front of St. Patrick’s Mercy Home in St. John’s, where her mother has lived for six years.
It’s not the home she is frustrated with — and certainly not the staff, whom she describes as “phenomenal” — but the endless isolation caused by visitor restrictions imposed by public health officials to keep the vulnerable long-term care population out of harm’s way.
However, she has grown impatient with St. Pat’s for not allowing designated family members to take their loved ones home for the day, as other facilities are doing. She called off her vigil last week when her sister was finally allowed to take their mom, Marie, to her home near Tors Cove.
Because Marie is disabled, they had to hire a specialized cab.
“It cost us $330 for that cab for Sunday, for a few hours,” she said.
NEW RULES
Hartery was elated to hear Wednesday that long-term care facilities would be allowed to designate six visitors per resident as of Monday.
Her hopes were dashed moments later when her sister was informed by St. Pat’s that the policy would not apply to their mother.
“They’ve told her that, no, it’s for people in palliative care,” she said when contacted.
“We’re all confused by this.” By late afternoon, St. Pat’s had changed its tune and will now allow two of six designated visitors in during any one visit.
Wednesday’s announcement came during the COVID-19 video briefing in St. John’s, and includes some loosening of restrictions at hospitals as well.
Health Minister Dr. John Haggie said the number six is based on the same public health principle as that used for expanding family “bubbles” at Alert Level 4, which allowed existing households to allow six more people into the fold.
But he said facilities have the discretion to apply visitor policies as they see fit.
“The actual mechanics in terms of visiting time and the location within the home … that would be facility and (resident) specific,” he said.
Hartery said she still doesn’t know whether her family will be allowed another day trip, or whether they can even afford it. And she doesn’t understand why they can’t have a socially distant visit in the facility’s garden, which was open for visits briefly, but then closed again.
“She cries when we Facetime,” Hartery says of her mother.
“Wouldn’t you cry, after Snowmageddon, all winter, and then this hits?”
Hartery’s despair echoes that of other families who have spoken to The Telegram over the past week. All of them share the same concern — that almost four months of isolation is exacting more of a toll than precautions originally warranted.
“Mom is in there over six years,” Hartery said. “I can count maybe four or five times that she did not have a family member in at least once a day. Every day. Plus we brought her meals. All that was taken from her.”
PRICE TO PAY
In an interview Tuesday, Haggie admitted the restrictions around long-term care have been the hardest decisions public health officials have had to make.
But he said they were necessary in light of the devastation caused by viral outbreaks in facilities in other parts of Canada. COVID-19 has claimed thousands of lives in these homes, making seniors the worst-hit demographic.
“I think on the basis of public health advice and common sense, the approach we’ve adopted has worked,” he said. “It will have a price to pay because, if you go back to the clinical world, there is no treatment that comes without a price, and some degree of isolation and depression, maybe, unfortunately will be the results of what we had to do to protect them physically.”
When contacted Wednesday, St. Pat’s referred inquiries to Eastern Health, which oversees all provincially run facilities.
Late Wednesday, a spokesperson provided general guidelines, and confirmed that rules may vary from home to home.