HALIFAX -- There are now 170 residents inside the Northwood long-term care home in Halifax with COVID-19, including Charlene Chiddenton's 84-year-old father.
"Each morning you wake up and wait in anticipation of being able to call over and see how he's doing and pray that each day you get good news,” she said.
Chiddenton says her father has a slight cough and runny nose but so far, does not have a fever.
As her father battles the virus, she believes there could be better communication between the facility and the families of residents who call Northwood home.
"I think they need to do better in regards to sharing information with families that are struggling right now not knowing what's going on in there with their loved one,” she said. “We're left to try and figure out what's going on because we're not getting enough information from them."
Janet Simm, the CEO of Northwood, describes the situation as a public health emergency, one that they’ve never seen before.
Even so, Simm doesn’t think the military needs to be brought in to help assist the facility, a move that is being taken at nursing homes in Ontario and Quebec.
"Calling in the military is not a call that Northwood can make. We do that in collaboration with our team members. We've not felt that necessary,” said Simm.
Northwood has been at the epicentre of an outbreak of the virus for weeks. Eleven people have died from complications related to COVID-19 at the facility so far.
There are three residents who are now being housed at the off-site recovery unit that has been set up by Northwood, and additional residents are expected to be transported to the unit over the weekend.
Northwood says all long-term care residents are being tested for COVID-19, whether they have symptoms or not.
As the COVID-19 pandemic lingers and Nova Scotia enters its sixth week of strict regulations to help curb the spread of the disease, some local businesses are stepping up to help out.
Hallmark Dental dropped off a supply of personal protective equipment, or PPE, to front-line workers at Northwood on Friday afternoon.
"We started two weeks ago, switching our production to PPEs and Northwood reached out to us and was asking if we can help producing some PPEs, we started printing, instead of models, what we usually do with our printing, for dentures, we started printing frames for face shields, and also ear protectors for the N95 masks,” said Manuel Fischer of Hallmark Dental.
Although New Brunswick is planning to start easing up pandemic restrictions, Premier Stephen McNeil says that is not expected to happen in Nova Scotia anytime soon.
"We're going to be continually vigilant to go after this virus to make sure that we control it and, then we'll begin to look at what are the things we can start lifting off of the restrictions, not just on the economy but on Nova Scotia's,” he said.
