Forest Heights one of 19 high-risk long-term care homes in Ontario

KITCHENER — Forest Heights is one of 19 high-risk “red” longterm care homes in the province.

The province has classified nursing homes in the province as being either red — with the most serious COVID-19 infections — yellow or green, which are homes with the least concern.

Forest Heights is the only red home in the region, said Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, the region’s acting medical officer of health, at a briefing Friday. One other home in Kitchener, Trinity Village, is yellow.

Only 19 of the province’s 626 long-term care homes are currently classified as “red.” Those homes have the most serious outbreaks and “require significant resources” from other health care partners, Wang said.

“This is a very, very large outbreak,” Wang said.

The outbreak at Forest Heights, a privately run home owned by Revera, is by far the most serious in the region. Almost one in four of the cases in the region have been either a resident or an employee at Forest Heights.

The home has been in continuous outbreak for almost two months, the longest of any home in the region. Its outbreak started on April 1. Fifty residents have died of COVID and almost three-quarters of all residents at the home have been infected — a total of 174 cases among its 240 residents. As well, 68 employees have been infected.

Andrea Cole’s 90-year-old mother Hope Cole lives at Forest Heights. She tested positive for the virus more than nine weeks ago and Andrea wanted her mother retested. It finally happened this week after much complaining.

“They are still obviously understaffed,” said Cole of the home, even though additional staff were brought in to deal with the outbreak.

The provincial government ordered the Canadian Armed Forces to provide extra help to five Ontario homes. Forest Heights was not included even though it had more deaths than two of the five homes where the military stepped in.

Ministry officials said they gave first priority for military help to homes with the most severe staffing problems.

“Why weren’t the military at Forest Heights?” said Cole, whose father, Leslie, 89, died at the home on April 20. His death was not COVID-19 related.

Cole said the military help should have come to homes battling the virus outside of the Toronto area.

“How did Doug Ford decide which homes got help?” she said. “You are the premier of Ontario, not just Toronto.”

Kitchener Centre MPP Laura Mae Lindo, whose riding includes Forest Heights, agrees. “To be honest, a lot of times when the government has had to intervene on anything, it’s been focused on Toronto first. It’s been part of our job to remind the government that there are other areas.”

On Friday, the province announced more enhanced and targeted testing of homes and other groups such as LCBO workers and police. Enhanced testing is expected for hospital workers and their families, residents and staff at retirement homes, and nursing homes.

A testing blitz of residents and staff at Ontario’s long-term care homes was completed two weeks ago.

Locally, public health completed whole-home testing of all long-term care homes on May 15.

According to a Globe and Mail compilation of cases in longterm care across the province, Forest Heights had the sixth highest numbers of deaths of any single home in the province. But while the outbreak at Forest Heights continues, Wang said the situation in the home is improving.

“We’ve seen the outbreak over time come under better control,” she said. “With these very large-scale outbreaks, it is very difficult to quickly bring it under control.

Forest Heights has received some help to deal with its outbreak. A dozen personal support workers have been reassigned from home and community care to Forest Heights to provide relief to front-line caregivers who have been working long hours throughout the outbreak. Revera has also hired 28 extra staff to bolster a variety of roles in the home, the company said.

As well, 54 residents have been temporarily moved to local hospitals, to make it easier for the home to isolate infected residents, and to relieve some pressure on staff at the home. New Democrat MPP Catherine Fife raised the situation at Forest Heights and other hardhit homes in the legislature this week, saying “scared and angry families” have contacted her and Lindo about the situation at Forest Heights.

“We can agree that the former government neglected our long-term care system,” Fife said in a question to the Conservative health minister. “But it is this government who looked the other way when the pandemic began.

“There has been no iron ring around these homes.”