Faced with the “wildfire” spread of deadly COVID-19 in long-term care, Premier Doug Ford is reversing course and issuing an emergency order banning staff from working in more than one nursing home.

The move aimed at limiting cross-infections came as the death toll in the hard-hit sector rose to at least 135 fatalities, with outbreaks infecting more than 800 vulnerable residents in more than 100 homes amid warnings the level of cases is about to skyrocket.

That scenario prompted the premier to pledge “hospital-based teams” will soon be dispatched to help provide care at overwhelmed nursing homes. Many facilities are short of staff because workers who have complained about a shortage of masks fear for their safety, and more than 400 have contracted the new coronavirus.

“People are dying,” Ford acknowledged Tuesday, a day after he said restricting staff to working in one nursing home would be difficult to implement.

“We must redeploy every available resource to our long-term care homes right now,” he added, promising more details of an “enhanced action plan” to come Wednesday — including infection control experts from hospitals.

The practice of staff working in several nursing homes has long been controversial because of concerns it allows illnesses to jump from one facility to another, which both Ford and Health Minister Christine Elliott have acknowledged.

“This is really key to limiting the expansion of the virus,” Elliott said Tuesday.

More than 70,000 frail or elderly Ontarians with underlying medical conditions and compromised immune systems live in nursing homes, often in close quarters that make it easier for any sickness to spread.

Until now, it had been a strong recommendation from chief medical officer of health Dr. David Williams that people not work in more than one facility, and notify their employers if they worked shifts in a facility with COVID-19 cases.

“From the beginning, we knew this was a concern,” Williams told a separate news conference Tuesday.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the restriction that her party and health organizations have long urged — and which Ford would not commit to making permanent — was long overdue.

“There’s been a lot of damage done by allowing that practice to keep going on in a pandemic,” she told the Star. “It’s nothing short of tragic.”

Horwath said the policy change is “coming far too late for far too many. This is the wake-up call the government needed.”

The Ontario Long Term Care Association, representing many of the province’s 626 nursing homes, said the new measures are “an important step” in the fight against COVID-19.

Liberal MPP Mitzie Hunter joined Horwath in saying the premier’s promise of putting an “iron ring” around nursing homes — with visitor bans and more staff screening — has failed.

Residents “have waited far too long for their government to address their safety,” Hunter said.

She and Horwath called for substantial pay raises for personal support workers, kitchen staff and other long-term care staff, with the NDP proposing a minimum wage of $22 hourly to recognize the value of their work.

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Ford was sympathetic but went no further, saying that such a move would require consultation with Williams and the long-term care sector.

“Personally, yes, my heart breaks for these people,” he said. “They deserve every penny — 10 times more than that as well.”

Asked why he didn’t act sooner on limiting the number of nursing homes where staff can work, Ford replied, “It’s never too late.”

He said the government had to wait until more workers could be lined up and to make sure hospitals would not get a massive surge of COVID-19 patients.

“Right now it looks pretty good in hospitals. We had to make sure we had the resources before we made the move,” Ford added in remarks echoed by Williams.

“No matter which way you cut that comment, it’s terrifying,” Horwath said, interpreting it as meaning that nursing home residents could have been left in the lurch if a surge had hit hospitals.

Williams said it’s more difficult to diagnose COVID-19 in nursing home residents because many already have shortness of breath and coughing from underlying conditions and seniors don’t often get “much of a fever” with the illness.

“It’s very hard to pick these up very early,” he said.

Ford said there will be more testing in long-term care to get a more accurate picture of the extent of COVID-19.

Federal public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam has warned that COVID-19 will keep killing long-term care residents even as overall spread of the illness slows in the rest of the population.

The risk of death from the virus in nursing home seniors is 10 to 20 times higher than for people of the same age living in the community, University of Toronto epidemiologist Dr. David Fisman said Monday.

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