{"id":26844,"date":"2020-06-25T09:08:39","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T13:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26844"},"modified":"2020-07-02T19:32:44","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T23:32:44","slug":"rally-thanks-frontline-heroes-at-chartwell-aurora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/rally-thanks-frontline-heroes-at-chartwell-aurora\/","title":{"rendered":"Rally thanks frontline heroes at Chartwell Aurora"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As numbers related to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to show encouraging signs, people are now setting their sights on how to adequately say thanks to the frontline heroes that helped keep communities safe and healthy at the peak of the outbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such show of thanks-giving took place on Saturday\nafternoon outside Chartwell Aurora (formerly Resthaven), the downtown Aurora\nlong-term care (LTC) residence that experienced a nearly 50-day outbreak of the\nvirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With COVID-19 now eradicated within its walls, families\nof loved ones who call Chartwell Aurora home were finally able to reunite \u2013\nalbeit at a distance \u2013 on Thursday as the Province eased restrictions of such\nvisits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Family members joined the rally in a show of solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe wanted to take a few minutes and thank the workers \u2013\nall of the workers, not just the Personal Support Workers, the cleaning staff,\nthe food services staff, the admin staff, everyone who has been through a very,\nvery difficult time,\u201d said Mich\u00e8le Bussi\u00e8res, who co-organized the rally in\nconjunction with the Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill Federal Liberal\nAssociation. \u201cThis was the long-term care home that was hardest hit in the\nriding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a way of saying thank you, and we just really\nwant to connect with the residents to say that we have all been isolating to\nsome varying degrees but they have been particularly hard-hit. We really wanted\nto have an opportunity to let them know their community cares about them, that\nwe haven\u2019t forgotten about them. The outbreak, using the term the Government\nuses, is technically over there, but we haven\u2019t forgotten about them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Messages of solidarity have also come out from Chartwell\nStaff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of the outbreak, 42 of 235 residents\ntested positive for COVID-19, according to Chartwell Aurora administrator Greg\nBoudreau. Out of 300 employees, 14 also tested positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twelve residents lost the battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach of those deaths is a great loss and we extend\nour sympathy to all families impacted,\u201d said Mr. Boudreau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur outbreak lasted 47 days and at the time our outbreak\nwas declared resolved we had no active cases and haven\u2019t had any since,\u201d he\ncontinued. \u201cDue to the quick response from the frontline staff, management and\nour Head Office we were able to contain the outbreak to only one of our five\nresident Home Areas. Unfortunately, the outbreak was in the part of\nour building with four-bed ward rooms. This included providing full PPE prior\nto our first case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThankfully we did not experience the same staffing shortages\nthat other LTC homes encountered. I attribute this solely to the phenomenal commitment\nof our frontline staff. There were dozens of daily examples of the heroic nature\nof all departments in caring for our residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTwo events have been indelibly ingrained in my memory. The\nfirst is Deon, a PSW who works on the resident home area that went into\noutbreak. She arrived for her first shift of our outbreak very early in\norder to be prepared to do what was needed to care for our residents. Not\nonly did she willingly arrive knowing she was putting herself in harm’s way,\nshe packed her car with all of the belongings she may need for the coming weeks\nas she was prepared to stay as long as needed, away from her own family, sleeping\nin her car, if she had to in order to ensure our residents were cared\nfor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe second is Stacey our infection control nurse\nwho worked 49 days straight, up to 16 hours a day, keeping her from her new husband\nof six months and their five children, in order to ensure residents, families,\nstaff and all of the various governing bodies were kept up to date so we could\nprovide the best care possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy words can not express the pride and gratitude I have\nfor every single person who put our residents’ interests and wellbeing above\ntheir own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At press time, there were a total of 11 active cases\nwithin Aurora and 85 cases deemed resolved and recovered for a total of 111\nconfirmed cases. Of the 11 active cases, nine are self-isolating, one is\nhospitalized (non-ICU), and one case remains under investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

15 Aurora residents have lost the battle against the\nvirus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the 111 total cases, 55 are attributed to\ninstitutional outbreak, 25 to close contact, 19 to local transmission, 10 to\ntravel, and two related to a workplace cluster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Region-wide, as of Tuesday evening, there are 333 active cases, 238 deaths, and 2,323 recoveries, for a total of 2,894.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As numbers related to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to show encouraging signs, people are now setting their sights on how to adequately say thanks to the frontline heroes that helped keep communities safe and healthy at the peak of the outbreak. One such show of thanks-giving took place on Saturday afternoon outside Chartwell Aurora (formerly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/2020-06-25-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6YY","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 14:35:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}