Airport staff, ambulance attendants and hospital workers are all at the ready in the unlikely event of an Ebola breakout, Quebec Health Minister Gaetan Barrette reported at a press conference Monday.
Barrette was emphatic in his reassurances that, “there will be no epidemic in Quebec.”
“Staff know what to do with a potential case,” he said. “If a person is suspected of being positive for Ebola, we have all of the resources to cope.”
Travellers from West Africa were informed to head to St. Justine and Notre Dame hospitals, the designated centres in Montreal at the onset of symptoms of hemorrhagic fever.
Somebody who tests positive outside of the city of Montreal will be transported to those hospitals by specially-equipped emergency staff, he explained.
"The issue is for the patient to be isolated at all times. It could be for three days, in a specific environment. Then the patient would be have to be transported with the proper equipment. The issue is isolation," he said.
Quebec Public Health Director Horacio Arruda, who flanked Barrette at the conference noted that while the risk is extremely low, it’s not zero.
“We will be able, if all the protocols are applied, to eliminate or reduce at the maximum the risk of any transmission in Quebec,” he said.
Arruda also said that no preventative vaccine is currently available to deal with the threat.
Health workers will be instructed to employ triage techniques and work with emergency staff. Tools have also been put at the disposal of pre-hospital services, he noted.
Last week paramedics joined a chorus of calls from nurses and flight attendants for more guidelines on how to deal with the threat of Ebola.
“The communication has not been perfect, I would say… we have taken measures to correct that during the weekend,” said Barrette.
Over 4,500 people have been killed by Ebola in West Africa. Eleven people have been tested for Ebola since April but none has proved positive.
“It's a severe disease when you get it, but it's not easy to get it. It's not the flu, it's not a cold, it's not influenza. It's not transmitted by air. It's transmitted by direct contact,” said Barrette.
Screening measures remain in place at airports.
“We work first of all with our colleagues from the feds to make sure that at the airport, at the entry in Canada, we can check or detect anybody coming from those countries who have symptoms,” said Arruda.
Samples from suspected cases are now analyzed within hours in Quebec at a lab in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, but they will still need to be sent to a lab in Winnipeg for a final confirmation of the results.
“The risk is extremely low, but once you get it, you have to be ready and we are,” said Barrette.
