Lundy Manor shuts down disclosure
Long-term-care home with 17 deaths will not release COVID-19 details
The Niagara long-term-care home that has seen the most COVID-19 related deaths says it will no longer publicly release information about its ongoing novel coronavirus outbreak.
In an emailed statement to The St. Catharines Standard Tuesday, a spokesperson for Oxford Living — the firm that owns Lundy Manor in Niagara Falls where at least 17 residents in the home who had the virus have died — said it won’t provide COVID-19 updates “owing to the current proposed classaction litigation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Families of the residents of Lundy Manor have filed a $20million class-action lawsuit against Oxford Living over the outbreak, which has seen at least 41 residents and eight staff become infected with the potentially deadly virus.
In their statement of claim, filed May 5, the families alleged Lundy Manor did not take the necessary steps to protect its staff and residents, even as warnings and infection control directives were being issued by the provincial government in March.
“They failed to take all reasonable, necessary and protective measures to ensure that the residents and staff of Lundy Manor were safe while on the premises of Lundy Manor,” said the statement, which also alleged the home’s management acted in a “high-handed and
arrogant manner with a wanton disregard for the safety and well-being of the plaintiffs.”
The claims have not been proven in court.
Lundy Manor is one of three Niagara long-term-care homes hit hard by COVID-19 during the pandemic. Starting in mid-April, dozens of healthcare workers and residents became ill.
The other two hardest-hit homes are both in Welland. At Seasons Retirement Community at least nine workers and 29 residents contracted the virus. At least seven of those residents have died. At Royal Rose Place, the home with the most COVID-19 cases, 48 staff and 70 residents were sickened by the virus and 17 residents have died.
There also smaller outbreaks at Henley House in St. Catharines, two Community Living residences in St. Catharines as well as at St. Catharines hospital and Greater Niagara General Hospital in Niagara Falls.
Niagara public health does not report the number of cases or deaths at each longterm-care home where an outbreak is declared. To date, The Standard has acquired outbreak data from sources at the homes.
Niagara’s acting medical officer of health Dr. Mustafa Hirji said public health — working on releasing COVID-19 data by municipality — has no plans to release details about each declared outbreak.
He did point to the provincial government’s daily COVID-19 webpage, which now includes a list of Ontario long-termcare homes with outbreaks.
However, that page only included Royal Rose, and does not accurately include the number of staff infected. No other Niagara home is listed on the webpage.
Institutional outbreaks, particularly those at long-termcare homes, drove Niagara’s COVID-19 case count through much of April and May even as the number of confirmed cases in the broader community continued to fall.
Of the 563 cases confirmed in Niagara since March 13, 28.4 per cent of them are longterm-care residents, according to public health data. Long-term-care residents also represent nearly 82 per cent of the 55 COVID-19 related deaths in the region.
At the start of this week, Hirji said the number of active cases in long-term-care homes has steadily fallen as infection control measures have helped contain the spread of the virus. Seasons had two active cases and Royal Rose had six.
As the outbreaks dwindle, so, too, has the number of new confirmed cases in Niagara each day. On both Tuesday and Wednesday, public health reported only two confirmed cases. Three of those cases are connected to local outbreaks while one has an unidentified source of infection.
Hirji said public health still wants residents who are showing even a single mild symptom related to COVID-19 to contact public health or their family doctor to get tested.