July 8, 2022
Dear Dr. Kieran Moore,
I write to you as President of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions-CUPE (OCHU), which
represents over 40,000 members working in hospitals and long-term care facilities in Ontario.
I request that you urgently reinstate Directive #5, which you revoked in a Memorandum dated
June 11, 2022, respecting the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) in hospitals and longterm
care homes.
The revocation of Directive #5 has resulted in there being no legal right for 350,000 health care
workers in Ontario to N95 respirators when treating and/or coming into contact with likely or
actual COVID-19 positive patients and residents.
CUPE membership, which includes RPNs, clerical staff, porters, personal support workers and
cleaners are still working tirelessly on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic which continues
to ravage our communities. As you confirmed on July 6, 2022 Ontario has officially entered its
seventh wave of COVID-19, driven this time by the Omicron BA.5 subvariant. Public Health
Ontario suspects the wave started as early as June 19, 2022.
New details are emerging daily about the severity of Ontario’s newest wave of COVID-19. As of
July 7, 2022, the province reported another 33 deaths related to the virus over the last week, as
well as rising numbers of hospitalizations and ICU admissions.
Throughout the pandemic, health care workers have been exposed to unnecessary and
unjustifiable risks daily due to the failings of various iterations of Directive #5 and the resulting
inadequate rules related to personal protective equipment (PPE). While non-regulated
healthcare professionals finally obtained higher protections in the December 22, 2021 version
of Directive #5, the recent revocation has left them now completely unprotected, yet again.
The numbers of infections and deaths amongst health care workers lays bare the extreme cost
of the failure in provision of adequate PPE in this province. In Ontario, the most recent PHO
weekly epidemiological report which reports the statistic identified 54,019 infected health care
workers since the start of the pandemic. Since June 4, 2022 the weekly report has not reported
on this statistic, making the sacrifice of health care workers even more invisible and
disrespected.
The number of health care worker deaths is estimated by CIHI at 46 deaths nation-wide, and 17
in Ontario. A detailed listing of health care worker deaths on the website of the Canadian
Federation of Nurses Unions’ (CFNU), which includes classification and links to news reports,
puts the number slightly higher at 55 in Canada, and 22 in Ontario.
As you no doubt know, the Ministry of Health “guidance” document issued on June 11, 2022,
has no legal force and is not enforceable via any mechanism. Re-issuing Directive #5 is
necessary to provide health care workers the right to the appropriate PPE, in particular N95
respirators, for a disease which is universally recognized as being transmitted via aerosols.
Thus, as the last iteration of Directive #5 recognized, required precautions for all health care
workers providing direct care to or interacting with a suspected, probable or confirmed case of
COVID-19 are a fit-tested, seal-checked N95 respirator (or approved equivalent), eye protection
(goggles or face shield), gown and gloves. This is not optional protection and yet it is treated as
such by many hospitals and long-term care homes around this province for hundreds of
thousands of health care workers.
As the 7th wave hits our communities and thus our hospitals and long-term care facilities, a
skeleton staff of exhausted health care workers is extremely vulnerable to the virus. Any
significant infection of the current workforce will dramatically impact services. On this basis
alone – the public interest – the reluctance to provide them with legal access as required to a
$2.00 mask is incomprehensible.
As the Chief Medical Officer of Health, you are under an obligation to monitor the public health
situation in Ontario and the state of knowledge about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. This includes
ensuring that appropriate directives are issued which are evidence-based and compliant with
the precautionary principle. Without reinstating Directive #5 immediately you are failing in your
duty to protect public health in this province. I urge you to act to remedy this failure now.
Thank you for your attention to this request.
Michael Hurley
President, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions-CUPE
