COVID-19’s Christmas impact
Chief public health officer warns against large Christmas gatherings
As the Christmas holiday period nears, P.E.I.’s Chief Public Health Office is looking into the possibility of a shorter mandatory self-isolation period for travellers from outside the Atlantic bubble.
During a media briefing on Tuesday, Dr. Heather Morrison, the province’s chief public health officer, said P.E.I. would be maintaining the “legal requirement” of quarantines for family members entering the province who have been pre-approved for travel.
But the required period of quarantine may be shorter than 14 days.
“I think the whole country is looking at how you could reduce quarantine safely,” Morrison said on Tuesday.
“For instance, if you were able to have three negative tests over a period of 10 days, the chances of it converting from a negative test to a positive test between days 10 and 14 is much lower. So, that is a potential that is being looked at."
Morrison did not give a timeline for introducing shorter quarantine periods, nor did she definitively say whether P.E.I. would adopt the measure.
No new cases were announced in P.E.I. on Tuesday. All 64 cases of COVID-19 recorded in P.E.I. have recovered.
The province of Alberta has announced a pilot project that would reduce the quarantine period for international travellers from 14 days to as little as 48 hours, as long as they receive a negative COVID-19 test. Individuals in the pilot project will need to agree to be tested a second time on the sixth or seventh day after arrival.
Alberta’s pilot project, which comes at a time of accelerated positive cases of COVID-19 in that province, began Monday and will run for 26 weeks.
Morrison said the current second wave of COVID-19 in Canada is top of mind. She warned against complacency in P.E.I.
“I ask that you plan for very small household gatherings over the holidays. This is not the year to host large Christmas gatherings with people outside your household," Morrison said.
Morrison said she was concerned about the increases in daily case rates seen in almost all regions of Canada outside of the Atlantic bubble. She also pointed to re-imposition of lockdowns in countries in Europe that have seen a dramatic escalation in daily case counts.
"It was predicted that the second wave of COVID-19 could be worse than the first wave in terms of both the numbers and the impact. And that is proving to be true," she said.
During the briefing, Health P.E.I. chief of nursing Marion Dowling also addressed the recent reopening of six beds within the Unit 9 psychiatric ward at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown.
The unit was closed early in the pandemic to allow for excess capacity for a possible COVID-19 surge of patients.
Since then, beds at the secured unit had been used for 14 dementia patients requiring specialized care.
Six of these patients have been moved to other facilities while the remaining eight have remained in a separated section of Unit 9.
"There is a wait, unfortunately, for long-term care home placement and specifically those specialized dementia care units," Dowling said.
Dowling also said the province has seen positive results with the psychiatric urgent care clinics established at Hillsborough Hospital in Charlottetown and the Prince County Hospital in Summerside.
Health administrators have said this helped reduce wait times for psychiatrists and helped reduce volume of emergency room patients.
“What we've seen from those psychiatric urgent care clinics is a very positive response from both the individuals receiving care and the health system care providers that have been involved," Dowling said.
Dowling added that full inpatient psychiatric care is currently available within Unit 9.