VANCOUVER—At the Vancouver care home that witnessed Canada’s first coronavirus-linked death, a worker in a surgical mask could be seen this week wiping a table, then closing the blinds of a resident’s room.

It is the same type of mask that worker was wearing that has sparked a rallying cry from nurses across the country, who fear it may not be giving them enough protection from COVID-19.

Compounding their concern is an opinion from legal experts, who say it’s health-care employers, such as individual hospitals and long-term care centres, that could eventually be held liable for workers getting sick on the job.

Workers at health-care facilities, such as the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver, are now on the front lines of the country’s fight against the virus that has killed more than 4,000 worldwide, and precipitated a plunge in stock markets.

As of Wednesday, six workers at Lynn Valley have been confirmed ill with the virus, with one having been admitted to hospital and later released. The care centre was the site of the country’s first death related to COVID-19, when a patient in his 80s died Sunday.

Health authorities refused to say what kind of work the infected people did; they could be nurses looking after residents’ health, or care aids who help residents with day-to-day tasks in the home.

Regardless, shielding those workers from illness could make the difference between the virus spreading or remaining relatively contained.

During the SARS outbreak in 2003, almost half of Ontario’s 247 probable SARS cases were nurses and other health-care staff who carried the burden not only of their own illnesses, but also of the risk that they could transmit it to others, potentially vulnerable patients.

Nurses and occupational health and safety experts across the country are indignant that guidance from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) asks health-care workers to wear surgical masks rather than N95 respirators. They say this leaves them less protected than the American Centre for Disease control and European counterparts.

“Right now they are failing to protect health-care workers,” said Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions president Linda Silas. “We need to do a better job in making sure every health-care facility is provided with the right training, personal protective equipment, and that the policies are up to date.”

Guidance from the PHAC says that workers should wear the more protective N95 respirator masks for certain close procedures only — partly because the public health agency wants to conserve supply of the masks.

Most of the time PHAC guidance tells workers to wear surgical masks when coming into contact with COVID-19 patients. The guidance has workers wearing the more protective N95 respirator masks for certain close procedures only. This is partly because the public health agency wants to conserve supply of the N95 masks.

N95 respirators stop the wearer from breathing in airborne particles containing viruses, while surgical masks are only meant to stop the wearer from spreading their germs to others.

The guidelines are based on science: Research that so far shows COVID-19 transmits from one person to another by contact with droplets containing the virus — like the product of a person’s sneeze from up close. The evidence says breathing in air containing small amounts of the virus is not nearly as likely to cause illness.

B.C.’s provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, confirmed Monday that workers at the Lynn Valley Care Centre and around the province had been following the guidelines.

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But the nurses are pointing to failures of the SARS crisis as evidence that following the science of the time is not always enough to protect workers.

Like COVID-19, SARS was a coronavirus that transmitted from person to person through droplets. But experts said after the SARS crisis that airborne transmission likely also occurred, with bits of the SARS virus getting into the air during certain medical procedures and even simple acts like coughs and sneezes.

The SARS Commission report that was conducted by Ontario Justice Archie Campbell following the 2003 outbreak concluded that government and health-care employers did not do enough to protect health-care workers by putting science before caution.

“The point is not science, but safety,” one chapter of the report reads. “We should be driven by the precautionary principle that reasonable steps to reduce risk should not await scientific certainty.”

That part of the SARS commission was quoted in a blog post from the Osler law firm in Toronto on precautions that health-care employers should be taking during COVID-19.

Three health-care labour lawyers from the firm wrote that hospitals should adopt the precautionary principle and take “all reasonable precautions to protect staff” — or face potential legal repercussions.

“Hospitals should be cognizant that it will be the hospital that will be legally liable for any failures to protect patients and staff from harm,” the post reads. “Even if hospitals have relied on federal, provincial or municipal government directives in establishing its own plans, policies and procedures.”

Lawsuits filed by nurses, patients, and families after SARS found that hospitals, unlike government, have statutory duties to ensure the safety of workers and patients.

For the past month, Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions president Silas has been fighting with the Public Health Agency of Canada to make their guidelines equivalent to those set by the Centre for Disease Control in the U.S., as well as comparable agencies in the U.K. and the European Union, which recommend the use of N95 masks out of an abundance of caution.

“We cannot have a second SARS episode,” Silas said. “Today in 2020 we have a lot more information, our staff are trained, we have the policies written, we have the equipment — we just need the leadership to implement the policies.”

Mario Possamai, who was a senior adviser to Ontario’s SARS commission responsible for occupational health and safety, said the fact that the supply of N95 masks is a concern so many years after SARS shows “an appalling lack of competence” from Canada’s health officials.

“We’re talking about making sure they feel protected and that we have their backs,” Possamai said in a previous interview. “If health-care workers begin to question the safety measures put in place it could really undermine their morale.”

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