MONTREAL — Quebec will no longer require people who live in seniors residences and long-term care homes to isolate for 10 days if another resident or a worker on their floor tests positive for COVID-19.
The preventive isolation policy had been criticized by family members who said their relatives' health declined during the isolation period.
Dr. Luc Boileau, Quebec’s interim public health director, told reporters Wednesday that residents will only have to isolate if they are in contact with someone who later tests positive for COVID-19 for more than 10 minutes without a mask. That isolation period will last five days.
"When I hear that sometimes autonomous people can't leave their apartment for 10 days, even though they've been vaccinated three times and don't have COVID, that's not normal," Seniors Minister Marguerite Blais said.
The change, which came into effect Wednesday, is one of several announced by Blais as the government looks to reduce restrictions in residential care facilities.
Blais said Quebec will also lift restrictions on the number of visitors residents can have by the end of the month and service providers, such as hair dressers, will once again be allowed in residential care facilities.
"I'd like us to stop being overcautious. We're very, very careful that our older people don't catch Omicron, catch a virus, and sometimes we're too careful with regard to these people," Blais said.
Joanne Béland, whose 84-year-old mother had to isolate for 10 days, despite testing negative twice during the isolation period, said the removal of the measure is "excellent news." Béland said her mother's health declined during the isolation period and she doesn't expect her to ever recover from having to stay in her room for 10 days.
Boileau said the loosening of measures is possible because the current wave of the pandemic in the province is subsiding.
Earlier in the day, a Quebec health research institute said that by the end of February, the number of people in Quebec hospitals with COVID-19 should drop to 1,500, a decline of about 500. There should be about half the number of intensive care patients by that time, or about 60.
The Institut national d'excellence en santé et services sociaux said in a news release that it expected the number of new hospitalizations to reach around 90 per day within the next two weeks.
It warned its projections should be interpreted with caution, as it cannot forecast the effect of changes to COVID-19 restrictions. Quebec reopened gyms and spas on Monday, shortly after lifting restrictions on private gatherings and limits on the number of people who can dine together at restaurants.
A separate health-care research institute said Wednesday that preliminary results from a vaccine study indicate three doses of COVID-19 vaccine offer more protection compared with two doses against severe and mild forms of the disease caused by the Omicron variant.
"The effectiveness is highest against serious COVID-19 infections — those that lead to hospitalizations," the Institut national de santé publique du Québec said in a news release. "This efficacy is around 80 per cent after two doses and 90 per cent after three doses."
Lead author Dr. Gaston De Serres said the effectiveness of two doses of vaccine against hospitalizations caused by the Delta variant was above 90 per cent last fall. But protection dropped to around 80 per cent against hospitalizations since the arrival of the Omicron mutation, he added.
"Moving down from 90 per cent to 80 per cent is not enormous, but it means that you double the number of hospitalized cases who are vaccinated," De Serres said in an interview Wednesday. "If you get a third dose, then you go back to this level of protection that we had against hospitalization (because of) Delta."
The study, conducted between Dec. 26, 2021, and Feb. 5, 2022, looked at more than 100,000 Quebec adults who visited COVID-19 testing centres but who were not hospitalized and around 25,000 people who were hospitalized with the disease.
Meanwhile, Quebec's Health Department reported 24 additional deaths linked to COVID-19 Wednesday. It said there were 1,995 patients with COVID-19, the first time since Jan. 6 there were fewer than 2,000 people in Quebec hospitals with the disease. Officials said 129 people were in intensive care, a decline of three from the day before.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 16, 2022.
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This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
Jacob Serebrin, The Canadian Press
