HSC screening visitors to high-risk wards for measles
Health Sciences Centre began screening visitors to its neonatal intensive care unit, Children's Hospital, Women's Hospital and ambulatory care clinics earlier this month.
Visitor screening is held away from patient care areas using an intercom, or at reception desks where a staff member will ask the visitor if they have recently had symptoms associated with measles, including a rash, a Shared Health spokesperson said Friday.
'If someone arrives at a facility presenting with symptoms of the measles virus, staff that are screening visitors consult with infectious disease physicians and infection control professionals to determine appropriate next steps,' the spokesperson said in an email.
Additional restrictions were put in place at the neonatal intensive care unit, including a limit of two-visitors at a time per patient, including the infant's designated caregiver.
Children under age five are not allowed to visit, except a twin of a baby admitted to the ward.
Manitoba has confirmed 146 measles cases since February and nearly all were in the last three months.
There were 72 confirmed measles cases recorded by the province in May and 28 confirmed and four probable cases in June. Twenty-seven cases have been recorded in July.
Doctors Manitoba said the HSC decision reflects physicians' concern about the spread of measles.
'Seeing Manitoba's largest hospital take pandemic-like screening precautions should be a wake-up call to Manitobans,' said spokesperson Keir Johnson.
Epidemiologist Cynthia Carr said she'd like all Manitoba hospitals to employ measles screening, and for HSC to expand restrictions for visitors under five years old beyond the neonatal intensive care unit.
Young children, who account for the majority of measles cases in Canada, can develop particularly severe complications.
'I hope that this will be expanded throughout the province to high-risk settings and high-risk groups, in terms of the specific, targeted approach for exclusions,' she said. 'Because we don't want to head toward this becoming endemic again, meaning routinely transmitting in Canada. But we're at risk.'
It's a rite of passage for parents to take older siblings into the hospital to meet their new baby brother or sister, Carr acknowledged, but the risk of unknowingly spreading a severe infection is especially high.
She called the restrictions a 'dual opportunity' to reinforce the serious nature of measles cases while preventing transmission among high-risk people.
'Having gone through COVID-19, and people still recovering from feeling like things got too strict, that they had a lack of agency in making their own decisions… It feels like it's trying to take sort of a step approach with a continued effort (toward) relationship building, trust.'
Manitoba's most recent exposure sites were in the southern region: the Winkler Walmart, Boundary Trails Health Centre and a building in the Rural Municipality of Roland.
On Friday, Southern Health did not say whether administrators would implement restrictions at its hospitals.
When Triangle Oasis Restaurant in Winkler was listed as an exposure site last month, co-owner Jonny Neufeld worried it would affect his business, either by a drop in customers or the virus spreading among staff.
Neither happened, he said Friday: 'There's been some scares, but no measles.'
He said the conversation around measles in the community has settled after a large spike of cases earlier in the summer. He still has some concern for southern Manitoba's youngest residents.
'Some people around me talk about how they don't want to get their kids vaccinated and whatnot,' he said.
'In my church, the preacher was talking about it once, (saying) you can heal naturally, of course, but there's a reason there are doctors out there, you should go see a doctor.'
Manitoba isn't the first province to introduce mandatory screenings in hospital settings.
In Ontario, where measles cases have exploded, visitors to the London Health Sciences Centre pediatric and women's care wards are screened for measles. They must provide proof of measles immunity or wear an N95 mask at all times.
Alberta media outlets reported last week that some hospitals in the province were triaging probable measles patients to wait in ambulance bays, rather than waiting rooms. Alberta has recorded more than 1,300 infections since March.
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak AbasReporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg's North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
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