COVID-19 is striking nursing homes again
MONTREAL — In the spring wave, Dr. Amit Arya was part of a long-term rapid action response team sent into homes hit by horrifying COVID outbreaks. A palliative care doctor, Arya saw residents who were gasping for air, whose oxygen levels had plummeted and who clearly had COVID-19 and were dying “and no one was there to provide the proper care, or look after them.”
“I’ll just be very open with you. It’s still something I think about every day. It haunts me. I wish I could have done more,” he said in an interview.
As a rash of new infections seeps back into longterm care homes, Arya fears more similarly horrendous scenes. Despite promises to protect the vulnerable this time around, COVID-19 is shifting, from the highest case numbers in the 20 to 39 age group over the summer, to increasing cases in older people. Canada’s chief public health officer warned this weekend about a growing number of outbreaks in long-term care.
“While these outbreaks involve a smaller number of cases than in April and May, we know that spread in these facilities often leads to death,” Dr. Theresa Tam said, with considerable understatement. The spring wave claimed more than 9,100 lives, with outbreaks in long-term care and retirement homes accounting for 75 per cent of all COVID-19 deaths in the country.
As of Monday, there were active outbreaks in 58 longterm care homes in Ontario; there have been 40 COVID19 deaths in the homes in the past month. On Sunday, federal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair tweeted that the Red Cross was being sent into seven Ottawa-area homes to help “asses and stabilize the situation.” Eleven homes in the Ottawa area are battling active outbreaks. In Edmonton, 53 residents and 27 staff have tested positive for the pandemic virus at the Millwoods Shepherd’s Care Centre; seven residents have died. Outbreaks have been reported in Quebec, B.C. and Alberta long-term care homes. Last week, an interim report from Ontario’s patient ombudsman told of reports of COVID-19 positive staff forced to come to work, and staffing shortages that were making it difficult to provide even the most basic care.
We blundered, appallingly, on the long-term care front in Ontario and Quebec in the first wave, experts say. It was the Achilles heel that drove up Canada’s case fatality rate. We crushed the curve and contained community spread, but forced the infection into under-staffed, ill-equipped long-term care homes, many of them older homes with three or more beds per room. There were more than 840 outbreaks. Military sent into Ontario and Quebec nursing homes found residents unwashed, dehydrated and, in some cases, dead. The “once-in-acentury” pandemic laid bare the deadly deficiencies dozens of studies and advocates had warned of for decades while so many governments averted their eyes. Now some worry, will the scenarios of the spring be repeated?