By Michael Boriero
Local Journalism Initiative
When the government announced the province would return to a lockdown in an effort to curb the sudden and sharp daily increase in COVID-19 cases, Grace Village remained unfazed, and quickly adapted their health and safety measures to once again meet the new standards.
It has been like this for most of the pandemic. The government lays down new guidelines, they remove them, and then add them back a few months later. But it has become a normal process for seniors residences like Grace Village. They’re accustomed to adjusting on the fly.
“Do we wish we weren’t here? Yes. But the reality is there is a rise in cases and so we hear the mandates and we follow them because we just don’t want to be one of those homes full of Covid,” said Karen Hornibrook.
Hornibrook is the interim executive director at the Grace Village retirement home in Lennoxville. She told The Record that it was fairly simple to shift back to tighter measures within the facility, most of the previous measures were already in place since the lockdown in 2020.
According to Hornibrook, they have been busy reaffirming each residents’ caregivers list, as per the Quebec government’s latest mandate. They also phoned everyone on the list to remind them that only one caregiver for each resident can enter at a time, or two in a 24-hour period.
“All people working in the hospital system are tired, so everybody is trying to minimize the risk and that’s what we’re doing with our residents. We’re very fortunate that so far we thankfully don’t have cases in our home,” said Hornibrook, adding it lowers the risk of exposure.
