The Lakeshore General Hospital is working to contain a second coronavirus outbreak.
According to the Quebec’s nurses’ union, the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ), the outbreak started on the hospital’s third floor — specifically, three north.
“It was a clean department,” said Elizabeth Rich, a union spokesperson. “There are 12 patients on that floor right now and some of them tested positive — a bit less than half.”
The CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Ile-de-Montréal, the regional health authority, confirmed the outbreak in a statement.
“We have a team on site that is currently reorganizing the containment areas,” the statement read.
“We try to avoid as much as possible the movement of care staff between hot and cold zones. It should be noted that employees do not move from zone to zone during the same shift. However, we must ensure that we provide essential care to all patients.”
However, the union insists that staff are consistently moving between different zones.
“People go back and forth from hot to cold,” said Rich. “It’s more dangerous. We keep telling the employer, please keep the people in the hot zones there, in the cold zones there, so they can stay clean, but this is not happening.”
This is the second coronavirus outbreak at the Lakeshore General Hospital.
The first one was reported a little less than two weeks ago.
The local health authority says there are currently 76 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the hospital. The Lakeshore is a designated centre for COVID-19-positive patients.
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