5 years on from COVID, what's changed and what hasn't in P.E.I.'s long-term care homes?
'With so much isolation, it really showed you how important community is'
It's a lively March day at the Dr. John M. Gillis Memorial Lodge in Belfast, P.E.I., as residents tap their feet and sing along with a guitarist performing The Black Velvet Band in a common room.
Gatherings like this were banned five years ago.
COVID-19 was spreading, and provincial officials were scrambling to control it. There were a lot of unknowns for those living and working in places like long-term care homes, given how deadly the disease was proving to be for people with compromised immunity elsewhere in Canada and around the world.
"When the global pandemic was going on, a lot of people here didn't realize that was happening on the outside. They started to think that maybe they had done something wrong and that their families weren't coming to visit them anymore," said Christina Linton, the activities director at Gillis Lodge.
"In long-term care, the staff is often like family members to the residents, but during COVID-19 we literally were their family members."
It was March 9, 2020, when P.E.I. Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Heather Morrison stood on a podium and gave her first briefing on a new respiratory illness to a room full of reporters.
At that point, no pandemic had been declared, and there had been no COVID-19 cases in the province.
Things moved quite quickly after that, though.
By the following Saturday, March 14, the Island's first case of COVID was confirmed in a person who had recently returned from travel. The next day, the decision was made to close schools and daycares for a while.
Eventually, in an effort to control the virus's spread, long-term care homes like Gillis Lodge were locked down and family members were no longer allowed to visit.
At the end of that year, a geriatrician on P.E.I. questioned what impact the isolation was having on seniors, suggesting the health of many older Islanders — both those living at home and people in long-term care — had declined because of pandemic restrictions.
We weren't built to accommodate an outbreak that lasted three to four years.— William McGuigan, Gillis Lodge director of operations
Linton and the rest of the Gillis Lodge staff saw the mental health struggles first-hand. They did what they could, hosting socially distanced holiday parties, organizing bingo in the hallways with the caller using a megaphone, and facilitating meetings with loved ones standing outside the windows.
"[Residents] struggled a little bit mental-health wise. We went from group activities to even having residents have to stay in their rooms because we didn't know how it spread," Linton said.
"With so much isolation, it really showed you how important community is and how important contact and socialization is to people."
Despite everything, Linton believes the province's health officials did their best with the knowledge they had at the time, given that COVID-19 was new to them too.
"I don't think… we ever anticipated the extent and the length of time it would be with us," Morrison said of those early days.
"You need to follow the science wherever you can and continue to make the best evidence-informed decisions you can, with the information you have at the time — and then be willing to adjust as that changes. And I think that's what… we really tried to do here."
Gear stockpiled now
Long-term care facilities also faced supply issues. They had masks and gowns, but not nearly enough, and finding more was tricky.
Now Gillis Lodge is among the residences that are not taking any chances when it comes to future outbreaks.
"Our basement is pretty well filled with gowns and masks and gloves and face shields and hand soap and chemicals for disinfecting," said William McGuigan, the director of operations. "I'd say we have at least enough product for about a month if we're in a complete lockdown."
Before, he said: "We weren't built to accommodate an outbreak that lasted three to four years."
If nothing else, COVID-19 highlighted the work long-term care staff do. The province has recognized that over the past few years with what McGuigan called "historic" investments in wages for workers, infection control measures and standards of care.
'Something we're always going to be thinking about'
While things may be mostly back to normal for the residents at the Belfast home now, some of the measures implemented during the pandemic remain in place today — and might never disappear.
"We started wearing masks in November and [we're] probably going to be wearing them into the end of the spring. This is influenza season and that's just how it is," McGuigan said.
"It's something we're always going to be thinking about, and we're always going to be looking at ways to improve."
Although not everything at Gillis Lodge is the way it used to be before March of 2020, it's much closer to what once was considered normal.
Linton recalls the "utter joy" of watching families be able to hug their loved ones again, when visitor restrictions were finally relaxed.
Above all else, the pandemic taught her to think of residents' physical and mental health as a full package.
"We were here caring for these residents, and they mean a lot to us," Linton said.
"To come to work every day and be able to make people happy during such a difficult time kept me going."