At the time, personal protective equipment (PPE) was limited to staff working at home, where residents were isolated as a preventive measure after visiting a hospital. Elsewhere in the home, she said, “We don’t have any masks.”

She said that with hindsight, particles in the air carrying the virus may have played a role. “You breathe the same air.”

Since the first wave of the epidemic, more and more evidence has shown that COVID-19 is spread mainly through the air as tiny particles (called aerosols), which are excreted when people speak, cough, or sneeze.However, most of Ontario’s extensive public health guidelines Still focusing on preventive measures, such as keeping distance and washing hands, aims to curb the spread of the virus that is spread by a large number of droplets at close range.

Critics say the guidelines are outdated and dangerous for many people working on the front lines in the country’s worst-hit provinces.

More than 540,000 Ontario people have been infected with COVID-19. Approximately 33,000 of these cases occurred among medical staff, including medical staff in long-term care facilities.

Although Ontario is not the only one taking steps to control the virus, Mario Posama said that the province puts people at risk because it has not heeded its past warnings.

Possamai is a forensic investigator who played a key role in the Ontario SARS Commission, which examined Ontario’s response to the 2003 SARS outbreak. Recently, he wrote a report on COVID-19 for the nurses union.

“SARS is called the dress rehearsal for COVID-19,” Possamai said.

He pointed out that one of the key points of the Ontario SARS Commission report is that Released in 2007It means that in the case of a new infectious disease outbreak, the chief medical officer of health should follow the so-called “precautionary principle”, that is, act safely.

He said that in the face of COVID-19, this should mean implementing airborne preventive measures for front-line workers, including improved ventilation and higher levels of respiratory protection, such as N95 masks, which are designed to seal the respiratory tract and block most airborne particles.

“The precautionary principle was formulated in response to COVID-19,” Possamai said. “When science is mixed, you make mistakes in caution; you protect people. You wait until the science is more reliable before you decide whether you can reduce preventive measures. But we didn’t do that.”

Since March 2020, Ontario Public Health Guidelines have stated that droplet prevention measures are sufficient to prevent the spread of COVID-19. According to the province, Airborne precautions, such as N95 masks, are only required for procedures that produce aerosols (such as intubating patients).

The provincial health authorities declined to comment on the matter and refused to answer any questions via e-mail, on the grounds that the recent legal challenge by the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) is still pending in court. ONA has asked the Ontario Superior Court to weigh Ontario’s obligation to explicitly recognize airborne risks in its health directive. The court has not issued a complete judgment.

Since the pandemic began, Vicki McKenna, the provincial chairman of the Ontario Nurses Association, has been advocating for better access to advanced PPE. She said that earlier, health care institutions were rationing supplies to save equipment. After filing a series of complaints, ONA took the province to court in April last year, asking it to order healthcare employers to provide a wider range of personal protective equipment.

McKenna said the front-line preventive measures should reflect new evidence of airborne transmission.She said the nurses were told, “Don’t worry, you are fine. Your surgical mask is good enough. This is contact [transmission].”

While Canadians vigorously support health workers across the country, leading infectious disease experts have repeatedly declared that COVID-19 is not airborne.

David Fisman is one of them. He is an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the Dalarana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He said that at the time, the view that the coronavirus was not spread in the air was in line with the traditional understanding of how the virus spreads. He said that according to this measurement standard, COVID-19 seems to be “a disease that spreads mainly over short distances, spread through large respiratory droplets that do not spread far,” while advanced masks such as N95 are unnecessary in most cases Stop the spread.

But when Fisman studied the early super-spreader incident, he said that he saw something irrelevant. He said that in some cases, the virus proved to be not very contagious. “Then on the other hand, in some cases, it may explode.”

Fisman found that the cases on the cruise ship were particularly confusing when trying to explain the spread through close contact.

“People confined in their huts are infected, even if they are not in contact with anyone else who is known to be actually infected. Therefore, they communicate with each other through the ventilation system,” he said. “That should tell us that this is an aerosol.”

Fisman knows what he knows now, and he said Ontario should be “extremely cautious” about the risks posed by aerosols in the beginning. “I actually feel very shy, because I think there was a lot of this information before us last year. And I don’t necessarily understand the meaning.”

These effects are beyond the reach of health care workers. The third wave of destruction in Ontario in the winter of 2021 was mainly driven by basic workers. Possamai said the epidemic is “preventable and avoidable”.

He said that if this risk is publicly recognized, ventilation and air purification in the indoor environment will be more valued, and high-risk workers will be able to obtain N95 respirators immediately.

Possamai pointed out that rethinking the way of indoor transmission has associated costs, which means “acknowledging that your medical orthodoxy is wrong.”

Eventually, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and later Ontario, Acknowledge the airborne risk of COVID-19 On their respective websites. However, public guidance has not changed significantly.

As the coronavirus subsides with the increase in vaccinations, McKenna said it’s time to consolidate the lessons learned so that in the future, “we will not suffer the same infections and infections in many cases that we have seen in our province. death.”

Since then, Viessmann has cooperated with ONA to handle hospital complaints to ensure that future medical staff can better obtain a full set of PPE, including N95 masks. He said he wants to know how many infections, especially deaths, can be prevented through “good science” so far.

“You know, I think you are talking about thousands of people who are not around now.”

As for Khan, she was dying. Now that she has been vaccinated, she has returned to the same nursing home where she worked for 21 years, but is doing desk work because she still cannot stand for more than a few minutes at a time.

She said that there are now many higher-level PPEs. Although she said she was grateful for her second chance, she was sad and angry. She sighed heavily and said, “If you take precautions at the beginning, [this] It will be a different story. “

Watch the full episode of “National” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Gem, CBC’s streaming service.