BREAKING: Ford government requests reinforcements from Canadian Armed Forces to help long-term care homes

“Today we’ll be making a formal request to bring in those extra reinforcements, this includes resources from the public health agency of Canada and Canadian Forces personnel,” said Ford.

Ford added that the personnel will be deployed to five priority homes in the province to provide relief for staff. The five homes were not specifically named.

He said the province has assembled COVID-19 swat teams and the Scarborough health network has sent medical experts to 17 long-term care homes in the region.

Dr. Merrilee Fullerton noted that increased testing is being provided for both symptomatic and asymptomatic staff and residence. Over 11,500 tests have been completed.

“Individual response plans have been executed to 22 long term care homes to help.” said Fullerton.

She mentioned that front line healthcare workers have seen some success as 20 long-term care homes were previously declared an outbreak are now outbreak free.

Ford also talked about the plan to slowly reopen Ontario's economy.

“There's never going to be one date that we just open up the economy,” he said. “We are going to open it up with a trickle and let it flow from there and constantly measure.”

When asked if all long-term care residents will be able to receive testing, Ford said, “We have all the resources. We have all the items that we need to do the testing so we're gonna do it rapidly as quickly and as fast as we can”