A COVID-19 testing blitz has been conducted at two local seniors' homes dealing with outbreaks.
Bluewater Health and Lambton Public Health say teams from the Sarnia assessment centre and the mobile response Community Paramedic Program, tested 272 residents and staff at Sarnia's Landmark Village retirement home and Lambton Meadowview Villa in Petrolia.
On Wednesday, the provincial government announced an action plan to protect the most vulnerable.
Ontario Minister of Long-Term Care Merrilee Fullerton told Sue Storr on CHOK (103.9 FM, 1070AM) Friday morning, that this follows action they took months ago to do everything possible to improve efforts for infection control.
"This is an unprecedented worldwide issue for our seniors and the death rates for COVID-19 in our elderly population are high worldwide," said Fullerton. "So we wanted to go an extra distance and make sure that we put more in place through our action plan and that was about more testing, more surveillance and screening, additional outbreak management and infection control."
There are 10 retirement residences and 10 long-term care homes in Sarnia-Lambton.
Testing at the remaining sites will be done over the next few days.