In the first day of Nursing Week, our entire RNAO team – Board of Directors, Assembly of leaders and 44,000 RNs, NPs and student members – wish each and all nurses, anywhere you work, to take pride and to reflect on your awesome and work. We want to thank you for nursing with knowledge, compassion and courage, as you are doing now during COVID-19, and always!

A story of hope, ingenuity, support and genuine care for an LTC resident We are grateful for this wonderful story shared by RNAO member Samantha MacNeill, RN, BScN. She writes a few days ago: I am a nurse advisor redeployed to provide clinical support and guidance to Peel Region’s five Long-Term Care (LTC) facilities. Over the course of my few months working with the LTC teams I have heard stories of hope, ingenuity, support and genuine care for their residents.

The official counting of deaths is just a fraction of the real toll of COVID-19 in about every country affected by the pandemic. The New York Times, doing important work, found at that least 60,000 more people have died during the coronavirus pandemic than the official Covid-19 death counts report, a review of mortality data in 15 countries shows — providing a clearer, if still incomplete, picture of the toll of the crisis.

Daria Gefrerer is a nurse practitioner who helps oversee Sunnybrook’s COVID-19 Assessment Centre. Up until March 16, Gefrerer was a nurse in the hospital’s birthing unit, taking care of mothers and families during labour, delivery and their postpartum stay.

Social distancing means being isolated from loved ones, separated from social networks, and having to make tough decisions, like which sibling would visit a dying parent. It also means huge adjustments in the way that care is being offered. In the community, most in-person visits have been cancelled and replaced by virtual care.

Today is National Doctors’ Day and RNAO wants to THANK Ontario, Canada, and the world’s doctors for the vital contribution each and everyone makes to the public, and for being awesome team members! I shined the lights for them at 9:00pm and hope you did too.

We continue our focus on vulnerable populations – how they are faring under the COVID-19 pandemic and what are the challenges of health providers taking care of them.

Today, we spotlight the valuable work of the Chiefs of Ontario in supporting the needs of First Nations persons and communities during this pandemic to prevent and/or delay the spread of COVID-19.

Today, Ontario health officials confirmed its second “presumptive” case of 2019-nCoV in Toronto, Canada. It was confirmed that the wife of the province’s first case had tested positive for the virus at Ontario’s public health laboratory.

Today, Ontario health officials shared that 47 cases in total have been under investigation. Thirty-four of those have been ruled out, 11 are pending and two have tested positive.