National Post (National Edition)
Call for nurses to pick a side of border
Health-care workers face local backlash
TORONTO • It takes Renée Amyotte just 15 minutes to get from her home in Windsor, Ont., to her job at the Detroit Medical Center’s Hutzel Women’s Hospital.
The 24-year-old nurse works 12-hour shifts in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, looking after infants whose mothers have tested positive for the coronavirus in a city hit hard by the pandemic.
Amyotte is one of some 1,600 Ontario nurses who cross the border to work in Detroit. Now, as Michigan suffers one of the worst outbreaks of the deadly virus in the United States, some Canadian officials are calling for curbs on their travel — a move that could devastate U.S. hospitals.
Wajid Ahmed, the top medical officer in Windsor-Essex County, is one of the loudest voices calling for more stringent border restrictions.
Ahmed said Canada should consider halving the number of medical personnel working across the border, or requiring them to stay in Detroit during the pandemic. He and other local officials have raised the issue with their counterparts in the provincial and federal governments.
“When you’re fighting a battle against COVID-19, we need to use every measure to contain it,” Ahmed said.
Justin Klamerus, president of Detroit’s Karmanos Cancer Institute, said restrictions on the travel of Canadian nurses would “cripple” the hospital.
Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens said there’s been some “angst” in the city about cross-border trips. He thinks current measures suffice.
The United States and Canada agreed last month to close the 8,900-kilometre frontier to non-essential traffic.
“If there are any further restrictions, what it ultimately means on the U.S. side is that people will die,” Dilkens said. “There’s no flowery way to say it.”
When 3M said this month that President Donald Trump requested it not send N95 respirator masks to Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited the Canadian doctors and nurses who work in Detroit as an example of the close supply chains between the two countries.
In addition to her job in Detroit, Amyotte also works as a continuing complex care nurse at Windsor’s Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, a post-acute-care facility.
A spokesman for Hôtel-Dieu Grace said its 16 workers who have jobs on both sides of the border were asked to choose one institution to help reduce the risk of asymptomatic spread.
Amyotte is one of the 16. She and five others picked Michigan.
Amyotte said she’s seen backlash on social media.
“It is a little bit frustrating and it is sad to see your own community turning on health-care workers,” she said.