We are very pleased to share with our friends and families that we have had some good news over the past several days. On Friday May 1^st, the Grey Bruce Health Unit declared the outbreak at our Maple View home in Owen Sound OVER.

We would also like to remind you that over the past several weeks, we have been working with our partners in healthcare, including hospitals, LHINs, public health authorities and the Ontario government to complete widespread testing of our long-term care and retirement homes throughout the province.

More than 50 percent of our homes have been tested and we are working steadily towards meeting full compliance at all of our remaining homes in line with the COVID-19 Action Plan for Protecting Long-Term Care Homes, local public health units and the Ministry of Long-Term Care.

For the swabs we have completed, we have begun receiving a large number of results back. At this time, the majority of the results we have received have been negative for COVID-19.

While this is good news, and indicates that the outbreak response measures we have implemented in our homes are working, we do still anticipate some positive cases being confirmed as a result of this increased testing effort. With this in mind, we would like to provide some context about what this will mean for public health units reporting case numbers.

The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has traditionally defined an outbreak as “two or more cases meeting the case definition with a common epidemiological link (e.g. specific unit or floor, same caregiver) with initial onset within a 48-hour period.” However, within the context of COVID-19, a long-term care or retirement home is now deemed to be in outbreak if they have one or more positive cases for the virus among residents or staff.

We would like to assure all of our family partners that we will always keep you informed should the status of any of our homes change in the coming weeks as a result of this scaled-up testing effort.