Two Kitchener long-term care homes are reporting deaths related to the novel coronavirus.
Highview Residences announced Monday that two of their residents had died, while Waterloo Public Health announced a death at their Lanark Heights as well.
Five residents of Highview have now died after contracting the virus.
“In so many ways, there are just no words that convey the grief and sadness to the families of our two residents who died yesterday,” Joy Birch, COO of Highview Residences, said in a statement. “Our staff and our other families are rallying with each other in support as we grieve and yet keep on working,”
Highview Residences says that nine of the remaining 21 residents of the home tested positive for COVID-19 while eight employees also had positive tests.
The company says it is on the hunt for help as many of the sick employees are nurses.
“We are working with the Local Health Integration Network and community to source nurses immediately to come and work with us,” Birch said. “We are following all of the required personal protective equipment policies for our teams and the directives around cleaning. Our nursing team has been particularly affected. We need 2 to 3 nurses who can come and work with us until we are through this.”
Waterloo Public Health announced on Tuesday that two people in the region had succumbed to the disease but only one of those came from Highview Residences so it appears the death toll has risen to 14.
Public Health updates their dashboard on a daily basis based upon the numbers it has at 7 p.m. the night before which could explain the discrepancy.
Seven of the 14 people who have died in the region lived at long term care or retirement homes in the area.
On Tuesday morning, public health’s update showed that 353 people in the region have contracted the virus, an increase of 24.
Tuesday’s update also showed that a host of people began to show symptoms for the virus on Friday and Saturday.
Thirty-four people showed symptoms on Friday while another began to see symptoms of the virus on Saturday.
A portion of the increase might be attributable to the fact that the region began to test more people late last week on orders from the province, Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, Waterloo Region’s acting medical officer of health said Monday.
“We were able to secure a lot more swabs as well as the fact that the province updated guidance in terms of the priority groups for testing and so we actioned that immediately,” she explained.
More than a dozen more people were cleared of the disease on Monday with that total now sitting at 107.
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