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Situation of Frontline Workers During Pandemic Ontario Paramedics' Urgent Need for Adequate Protective EquipmentWorkers' Forum: What are the main concerns of paramedics at this time? Jason Fraser: Our concerns, I think, are very similar across Canada. We are facing the same challenges -- the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE).
We have taken the position that surgical masks are not appropriate. It should be an N95. The PPE issue, I would say, is very similar to what is going on across the country and worldwide. We need to be cautious on how much PPE we are wearing or using on calls. Different paramedic services in Ontario are taking different approaches. Some services have the approach that only one paramedic needs to put on their PPE and can manage the call as a single provider, while the other paramedic just stays at 2 meters back to assist, in order to conserve the PPE and make it last longer. The orders for equipment are not coming in as quickly as we would like to see them coming in, that is for sure. I have not heard of anybody running out of things as of yet, but definitely services have reached critical levels and we have had to rely on the province to supply PPE. Months ago the province was continuously saying that they had an adequate supply of PPE but there are shortages and this is creating a difficult situation for the workers. In our opinion the reason that the Chief Medical Officer of health in Ontario downgraded from N95 to surgical masks is solely based on the lack of available PPE. If we look back to 2003, when SARS was happening, we wore N95 masks, gloves and gowns on every call. It did not matter what the nature of that call was. That was the standard, the best available protection. When we fast forward 17 years to COVID-19 and the lack of available resources for PPE supplies, it is now all of a sudden downgraded to surgical masks. It just does not make sense. We do not want a bare bone or minimal standard. We want to have the best available to us and the best is N95. We should not be in the position of having to make decisions based on what crucial equipment we have available to us. That equipment should be readily available. The provincial government had plenty of time to prepare for this. There were plenty of indicators back in late December, early January, that the virus was heading our way, that Canada, including Ontario, was not going to avoid the virus coming here. There was adequate time for them to prepare and get a stockpile of N95 masks and gowns to ensure that every front line worker was protected. They failed to do that. They failed to properly plan. We are playing catch up and we have never really been able to catch up. We should never be in that position. The equipment should be there and every worker should be protected. WF: Is your volume of calls going
up now that more places are opening in Ontario
and confinement restrictions are getting
loosened? WF: Do you want to say something in conclusion? JF: We need to remain diligent as things in the province start to loosen up. We need to keep in mind that the virus is still active. We need to continue wearing our PPE on calls. Paramedics are going into many different places -- businesses, homes, long term care facilities, and in and out of hospitals on a regular basis. We do not want paramedics to be transporters of the virus in those facilities. The view should be that everybody is positive until proven otherwise and be protected accordingly.
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Our Chief Medical
Officer of Health in Ontario has downgraded what
we consider to be the standard of using a N95
mask, which is like the gold standard. They have
downgraded it, saying that wearing a surgical
mask is sufficient to fight COVID-19 and protect
the workers from contracting the virus.