REGINA -- The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) is reporting one new COVID-19 death linked to the outbreak at Extendicare Parkside.
As of Thursday, 21 residents who tested positive for COVID-19 have died. The care home has 69 active cases among the residents and 82 cases among staff.
The outbreak of COVID-19 in the long-term care home was announced at the start of December.
Since then, the SHA moved 25 residents from Extendicare Parkside to Pioneer Village, another long-term care home in Regina, to lighten the workload on staff at the facility.
As of Friday, 18 of the residents who moved from Extendicare Parkside to Pioneer Village have tested positive for COVID-19. Four people have recovered, two people are negative and one person has died.
The SHA took over temporary control of the facility last week and believes a number of factors contributed to the facility’s severe outbreak.
"That’s infection control practices up to the SHA standard, the additional PPE, staffing levels within the facility because of some of the things that were going on during the outbreak wasn’t normal," SHA CEO Scott Livingstone said on Thursday.
Parkside also features a number of four-person rooms, which Livingstone said is another key factor to the high infection rate.
"It’s not conducive to slowing the spread of a virus as aggressive as COVID-19," he said.
The NDP and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses are calling for a public inquiry into the situation at the care home.
The issues at the facility have been highlighted in CEO Tour Reports conducted by the Provincial Government as far back as 2013 when concerns were raised regarding the age of the facility and staff levels.
The facility’s age was again mentioned in last year’s report, along with concerns over the four-bed rooms not meeting current standards of care.
NDP Leader Ryan Meili highlighted that fact in a tweet on Thursday, "The loss of life at this facility has been incredibly tragic and made even more so by the fact that it was preventable," the Opposition leader tweeted.
The SHA said it doesn’t decide if an inquiry should happen.
"If a review occurred we would like to see it look at both our relationships with long-term care providers that are outside of the auspices of the SHA, how programs are operated within those facilities as it relates to standards that are created by the SHA and our day-to-day relationship," Livingstone said.
In a statement, the province declined to say if an inquiry is forthcoming, stating, "At this time, the SHA has entered a temporary co-management agreement until January 15 in response to the COVID-19 outbreak at Extendicare. This remains our top priority."
The province is also meeting with Extendicare’s western executive leadership to discuss the current challenges and decide on the next steps at the facility.
