Regina assisted living home taking temperatures, monitoring after employee contracts COVID-19

Eden Care Communities is tracing who a staff member may have come in contact with at their Memory Lane assisted living centre in Regina after they employee tested positive for COVID-19.

CEO Alan Stephen told 980 CJME in an interview Friday afternoon that the staff member was isolated at home, while three other staff members and a resident who came in contact are in quarantine.

Now leadership at the care home is working with public health officials to work backward through the staff member’s work schedules to trace with whom else they may have worked.

Stephen said the staff member who tested positive worked as a “care partner,” providing daily activities and assisting with medication.

“They’re very much in contact with their care partner, they work in pairs, and they’re responsible for a neighbourhood,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that a care partner was a carrier.”

Eden Care is now taking precautions to reduce any potential spread of COVID-19 within the Memory Lane facility, including closing to admissions, discharges and transfers.

Any residents who were in contact with the care partner will be isolated and monitored.

The facility has already been in contact with every family in relation to the positive test.

Stephen noted none of the residents are showing any symptoms of the novel coronavirus, but they are continuing to take everyone’s temperature twice a day — including staff. The practice started last month as the pandemic began to spread to Canada.

“We’ve had nothing but support from them,” he said. “They understand the work we’ve been doing over the last month.”

He said if everyone continues practising good hand hygiene and they monitor for symptoms, his hope is they won’t experience more cases.

“As long as we follow those precautions and our surveillance precautions, hopefully we’ll get through this with very little impact,” he said.