Dolce Vita only senior care facility with outbreak in Windsor-essex

For a brief period on Wednesday, it appeared that no long-term care facility or retirement home in Windsor-essex was dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak.

But the all-clear turned out to be an illusion, with the Windsor-essex County Health Unit reporting on Thursday three newly-confirmed cases at Dolce Vita Retirement Living (854 Erie St. East) — a small retirement home in Windsor's Via Italia.

The outbreak comes after the completion of COVID-19 vaccination programs at all long-term care and retirement homes in the region.

Dr. Wajid Ahmed, the region's medical officer of health, said the three individuals at Dolce Vita Retirement Living who recently tested positive did not receive the vaccine.

“Without getting into any personal health information, I can say only ... that no, they were not vaccinated,” Ahmed said on Thursday.

“This is an evolving situation right now. It's very contained, but because the transmission happened in that setting, an outbreak declaration has been made.”

Ahmed said he is hopeful there are no further cases at the retirement home, and he remains positive about the progress that has been made to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at such residences across the region.

Theresa Marentette, health unit CEO and chief nursing officer, said there was a sense of joy in recent weeks with the rescinding of outbreaks in the long-term care and retirement residence sector.

“Every time a home was rescinded or something was concluded after a lot of effort ... it was a good feeling,” Marentette said. “Everything changes so quickly, though.”

Marentette acknowledged that there is currently “a lot of (COVID-19) activity” at schools in the region.

“Our nurses and our staff are working very closely with all of the school boards,” Marentette said. “There are always good successes, and then there are other things that still require a lot of attention.”

As of Thursday, nine schools under the Greater Essex County District School Board and three schools under the Windsor-essex Catholic District School Board have had isolated COVID -19 cases among students or staff in the past two weeks.

Marentette said 15 student cohorts across three school boards — about 314 students in total, ranging from junior kindergarten to Grade 11 — are currently dismissed due to COVID-19 cases.

One school in the region — Monseigneur-jean-noël Catholic Elementary School (3225 California Ave.) — is considered to be in an outbreak situation.

According to Conseil scolaire catholique Providence, the French Catholic school board, the school has four recently-confirmed active cases of COVID-19.

Marentette said at least two of those cases were in one classroom.

In total, the health unit is officially monitoring 12 outbreak situations in Windsor-essex, as of Thursday.

Six of those outbreaks involve workplaces, two are at hospitals, and two are at community locations — the Salvation Army and the Downtown Mission.