COVID-19 outbreak declared at Trillium Care Community
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Trillium Care Community, a long-term care facility in Kingston, declared a COVID-19 outbreak on Wednesday after a staff member tested positive for the virus.
“We can confirm one team member at Trillium Care Community has tested positive for COVID-19 following routine surveillance testing,” a representative from Sienna Senior Living, the company that runs the facility, said in a written statement provided to the Whig-Standard.
The company said that all other team member test results have returned negative.
“Team members are tested regularly as part of our protocols to help protect them and residents during the pandemic,” the statement said. “As a precaution, we will be testing all residents. We have also implemented additional preventative measures to allow only essential caregivers for visiting purposes, and residents will be staying in their rooms until their test results have been returned and further guidance is provided by public health.”
As part of the company’s protocol, any team member who tests positive isolates at home, the statement said.
“We have communicated with residents and families and continue to provide regular updates to ensure they are engaged in their loved one’s care,” the company said.
In the Kingston region, an outbreak is declared at any long-term care residence if one case of COVID-19 is identified in the facility.
It’s the third outbreak in a Kingston-area long-term care facility since Oct. 8, when Fairmont Home had a staff member test positive, and Oct. 28, when local public health identified a staff member and a resident as being infected with the virus at Helen Henderson Care Centre in Amherstview.
Local public health declared the COVID-19 outbreak at Helen Henderson Care Centre in Amherstview over on Wednesday.
All three cases linked to those first two outbreaks are considered resolved, according to Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington Public Health’s COVID-19 dashboard on its website.
The local health unit reported two new cases of COVID-19 in the community on Wednesday: a woman in her 20s who works at Trillium Care Community, and whose exposure to the virus is under investigation, and a female in her 20s whose exposure was travel-related. Both are located in Kingston.
The new cases bring Kingston region’s total cases to 199. There are 15 active cases, with none of those being hospitalized.
On Tuesday, St. Lawrence College issued a news release to inform the public that a positive case of COVID-19 had been identified in a student who was enrolled in a program on its Kingston campus.
“In order to respect the privacy and maintain confidentiality of the student’s medical information, (the college) can only confirm they were last on the Kingston campus the week of Nov. 2,” the statement said. “Their contraction of COVID-19 is being followed up on by public health.”
It is unclear on which date the student received the positive test result.