Safety can sometimes come with a cost, and an Orillia business has bitten the bullet to ensure staff and clients feel at ease.
The Anti-Aging Clinic provides treatments that often require close contact. Some of those treatments can last up to three hours. So, when owners Blade and Ben Tiessen reopened after being forced to shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they went the extra mile.
They purchased two new pieces of equipment: an AIIR (airborne infection isolation and removal) device — which, according to the CareHealth Meditech website, “contains and helps eliminate both droplet and aerosol particles, pathogens, and aerosolized mercury from the field, providing improved safety, peace of mind and visible security for both patients and teams” — and an air-purification system that works for the entire clinic. They cost thousands of dollars each.
“It’s not a mandatory thing, but we want to keep our clients and our staff safe,” said Blade Tiessen. “My patients are worth it.”
Despite some of the panic amid the pandemic, clients have been just as comfortable going for treatment as they were before, he said.
“What has changed is my comfort level,” he said, noting he is spreading treatments out over a number of sessions and isn’t seeing as many people on the same day. “We’re a married couple. We’re running a business together. We can’t afford to get (COVID-19) and have to shut down.”
Tiessen said clients were already impressed with the clinic’s pre-pandemic safety precautions.
“The fact that we’ve increased them makes them even more comfortable,” he said.
It also helps that the clinic is now in a 4,000-square-foot space on Colborne Street East — much more spacious than its former location on Mississaga Street East.
Tiessen is grateful he’s able to keep his business running during this time, but he’s looking forward to the day he can get back to travelling the world to teach people about the various treatments. He was scheduled to travel to Vancouver, Nova Scotia, Florida, Jamaica and elsewhere, but all of those plans were cancelled when the pandemic hit, so he’s been doing online instruction.
More information about the clinic can be found here.
