Canadian governments are discovering after treating senior care homes as separate from the health care system, allowing minimal staffing, little or no Personal Protective Equipement (PPE), poor wages and benefits that often force workers to be employed in more than one place and thereby assisting in the spread of disease, and little to no government checkup of homes, the terrible toll this has taken on people who live and work there, with almost half the deaths from COVID-19 in Canada occurring in these homes. Belatedly a few measures are being taken to begin to address these problems.
As Canadians continue to adhere to public health guidelines for COVID-19, one aspect of our country’s response to this crisis has been devastatingly inadequate. Across Canada, many intensive care unit spaces sit empty, while residents of long-term care homes are dying in their beds – sometimes abandoned, filthy with excrement and alone.
Our hospitals are ready. Doctors and nurses have been properly trained and are waiting to be called in for COVID-19 duty. Personal protective equipment is available, and, if not, it’s on its way.
Meanwhile, caregivers in many long-term care homes are underpaid, lack training and don’t have PPE. How could this have happened when we knew from day one that long-term care homes would be centres of COVID-19 infection? How could we have failed our care-home residents so badly? There are hundreds of these facilities dealing with outbreaks across Canada.
When Quebec Premier François Legault referred to negligence in describing the devastation at Montreal’s Résidence Herron, where 31 seniors have died, his words should have caused a serious moment of self-reflection for all politicians and government officials across Canada. The potential for devastation in hundreds of long-term care homes across Canada is a national shame.
That seniors are vulnerable to COVID-19 and that long-term care homes are vulnerable to infection is not part of the emerging science of this virus. It is not unique to COVID-19. We have known that seniors in long-term care homes are vulnerable to infection for years. So how can we have failed so miserably to prepare these homes to protect their residents during this pandemic? What has emerged from the horrors of Résidence Herron, Pinecrest Nursing Home in Bobcaygeon, Ont., and McKenzie Towne Long Term Care Home in Calgary is the stark picture of a lack of protocols, preparedness and resources. ...
We have the chance to do things better. There is still a patchwork of advice and guidance across Canada for long-term care homes. Some provinces are ahead of others and best practices exist, but we need all jurisdictions to move quickly to catch up. We have the knowledge, funding and equipment to bolster infection control in long-term care homes and we need to support them fully. Visitors should not be allowed, unless under extreme circumstances. Masks should be worn by staff at all times when working with residents. Staff in care homes need PPE as much as nurses and doctors in hospitals – they, too, are on the front lines with sick and dying patients. All staff and long-term care-home residents should be tested for COVID-19 – even those without symptoms – in order for isolation protocols to work quickly and more effectively. Care-home staff should be banned from working in more than one facility to limit the exposure of infection between homes. Care-home staff are underpaid and many are casual. We must step up and ensure funding is available to hire more full-time staff if needed. ...
Care homes need clear guidance and hands-on support from health authorities when an outbreak occurs. They cannot be left to manage on their own. Whether they are privately or publicly funded homes, they must be seen as part of our health care system during this pandemic.
Sadly, we have already lost too many residents in care homes to COVID-19 because of a lack of preparedness and focus.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-seniors-care-home-neglec...
Basically this can be summed with "There is a failure of leadership at every level of government." that resulted in a patchwork system that is so weak it would never occur in the mainstream healthcare system because voters would toss such a government out of office.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/covid-care-homes-warnings-1.5532312
In Ontario the Ford government has had long-term care home owners pushing it to eliminate annual inspections of these homes. CBC National reported tonight that many such Ontario homes have not been inspected since 2017 0r 2018, basically since Ford has been elected.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/long-term-care-homes-want-end-...
Ever since I was a child I knew that Canada's 'old folks homes' were places the unwanted elderly were sent to die. And it usually worked. Nothing has changed apparently. Only made obvious.
Belatedly, the NDP BC government has begun to address some of the structural issues that have led to such tragic deaths, by taking over as the employer of all long-term careworkers, raising their wages and benefits, making them full-time workers who are employed by only one facility to minimize disease spread.
The Trudeau government has also belatedly said that at long term care homes it will "help provinces increase worker pay to keep the battle lines well staffed." (https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/covid-19-crisis-trudeau-says-gove...)
The Trudeau government was forced to do this because, sadly, many of the long-term care workers could get more money because "The government’s emergency benefit program, which pays $2,000 per month to people who have lost their income because of COVID-19 was potentially more attractive to some long-term care home workers, because it provided similar or more money than they can make at the facilities."
https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/04/01/Long-Term-Care-Worker-Pay-Boosted/
Quebec has been the hardest hit province both in terms of total COVID-19 cases and its problems in longterm care homes. The factors leading to the long term care home resident crisis were laregly predictable.
It is interesting that Quebec has three times as many private long term care residents (18.4% ) as the Canadian average of 6.1%. The Maison Herron private long-term care facility in Dorval, whose owners are under criminal investigation over the death of 31 residents, had a bitter strike by workers for higher pay last year. In CBC National interview, the family of one of the deceased seniors said the failure to increase the home's low pay left many health care attendants in the home feeling little sense of loyalty to the employer, thereby contributing to their willingness to stop working as the risks to their own health grew.
https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/many-factors-behin...
Long term care homes in Quebec are in full crisis mode with 142 homes having Coronavirus outbreaks and 42 facing a "critical situation", with 25% of long term care residents testing positive for Coronavirus with up to 120 residents in a single home having the virus. It looks like many more deaths are likely to occur for those in these homes.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/covid-19-april-15-quebec-1.5532673
Hi jerry,
So great to hear from you after all this time. How are you doing?
Thanks Aristotled24. I appear to be over it now. However, it was unlike any other infection that I have had because there were so many up one day and down the next days.
It's good to hear that you have recovered, Jerry.
Yes, indeed. Glad to hear it Jerry. And see if you can get tested with one of those mythical serological tests they supposedly now have and which will tell you if in fact it was COVID. If so you are to the best of current knowledge now immune!
As Canada's COVID-19 Death Toll Passes 1000, Attention Focuses on Long Term Care Homes
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/as-canadas-covid-19-death-toll-pa...
"The uncomfortable and tragic truth is that the very places that care for our elderly are the most vulnerable to COVID-19,' Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. 'We all need to take leadership for the seniors who built this country.' 'The reality is, despite our best efforts*, we're dealing with a wildfire at our long-term care homes right now,' Ontario Premier Doug Ford said this week. The province's chief medical officer David Williams said Wednesday that Ontario now has outbreaks at 98 homes, and has seen 145 long term care deaths, although this number is likely low..." *Best efforts? I think not.
Staff at Verdun Seniors' Residence Were Locked in to Prevent Them From Leaving
https://twitter.com/JohnOCAP/status/1250774362107641856
"The failure to protect residents and the abuse of workers in the private long-term care facilities will be the most shocking element of the situation to consider when there is a reckoning after the pandemic."
COVID-19 And the Tragic Truth of Failing Our Nations Elderly
https://twitter.com/BigJMcC/status/1250731001422196737
"Regardless of how all this ends, Canadians will have to come to terms with the fact that as a nation, we failed far too many of our oldest and most vulnerable citizens..."
('But China...!')
In Quebec, specialists are going to be working as caregivers, for 211.00 dollars an hour.
It is almost a truism in Canada that any social or health emergency gaining traction with the public and media will be exploited as an opportunity to further enrich the professional and administrative classes. Those on the bottom are structurally kept there. Public monies mostly flow up not down.
On CBC's the National, Quebec Minister of Health Danielle McCann admits that the provinces long term care homes had a large shortage of workers before COVID-19, saying that "we need thousands and thousands of people, not just a few hundred." indicating that then long-term care problem was severe well before this crisis. For a former Parti Quebecois independentiste Minister and now CAQ Premier, who is extremely jealous of provincial jurisdictions, to ask Trudeau for help from the Canadian military shows how dire the situation is.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/covid-19-quebec-april-17-1.5535556
Quebec also seems willing to call in the extremely well paid specialists, who although highly trained often have skills to match this situation, even though there are "retired nurses are waiting to be called that are more suited to the work than specialsts", according to the CBC National News. Roberto Bomba from the Quebec Nurses Union said, in referring to the specialists, "They better have a knowledge base and run around and care for the residents. But under no circumstances are they to put in requests for nurses. Our nurses are doing the work. They don't have time to babysit specialists." These quotes can be seen at this url (https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1725790275768)
I would also say that the extremely poorly paid residential care attendants don't have time to babysit specialists also. It's another example of elites preferring to use other elites even when they are not the best choice.
There are also major questions being raised about the criminal record of the owner, Samir Chowieri, who is the owner of six other long term care homes,, of the Herron long term care home where 31 seniors died since mid March, and to his family's almost $10,000 in donations to the Quebec Liberal Party.
Furthermore, more questions have been raised as Chowieri has no criminal record after receiving a pardon: "Frédéric Lepage, a spokesperson for Katasa Group Inc. [Chowieri's corporation], sent the Montreal Gazette a copy of a letter from the Parole Board of Canada stating that Chowieri has, since 2014, 'a record suspension under the Criminal Records Act.' " (https://montrealgazette.com/news/herron-scandal-prompts-quebec-to-consid...)
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/owner-of-residence-herron-wa...
Jerry, so happy you've recovered! Look at this one. Unbelievable! It also means that the Federal government is or was essentially paying rent to the Mafia. https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/residence-herron-owner-bough...
I do find it hard to believe that Vito Rizzuto lived in Little Italy anytime in recent history. Yes, my hood is charming with the market and all, and there is increasing upscale condo development here and in adjacent Villeray and "Mile-X", but it remains a neighbourhood of duplexes and triplexes that are very far from spacious or grand. Hardly "Mafia" taste.
Mafia types tend to opt for the more upscale parts of St-Léonard (where there is also great poverty, mostly among more recent immigrants), Anjou, Ahuntsic (near Rivière-des-Prairies) or the RDP part of that eastern borough. Or Laval, across that river, also near it.
Thanks Lagatta.
The Ford government's "enhanced plan to fight COVID-19 in the province's long-term care homes" is completely inadequate. It's restriction that care workers can only work at one facility is only for 14 days, does not cover workers who come from temp agencies and does not come into effect until April 22nd. Furthermore, it does not raise long term care workers pay or benefits or the part-time nature of many of their jobs, which has helped create high turnover rates and poor quality care. It also does not return to the 'resident quality inspections' at care homes that were key to catching 87 per cent of infection control violations, as noted in post #17.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-launches-plan-to-fight-covid-19-in-be...
The same sad trail of death's in senior's care homes in Ontario, Quebec and BC, brought on by minimal staffing, little or no Personal Protective Equipement (PPE), poor wages and benefits that often force workers to be employed in more than one place and thereby assisting in the spread of disease, and little to no government checkup of homes, has also occurred in Alberta.
The real scandal is that “Everyone knew this could happen,” said Doris Grinspun, president and CEO of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario. “It’s like somebody sat in a room and said, ‘This is a population we can live without.’ ”
https://www.toronto.com/news-story/9952198--everyone-knew-this-could-hap...
Almost half the deaths in Canada from Covid-19 have occurred in care homes for seniors. Today Quebec Pemier Legault reported that 80% of the provinces 1,041 Covid-19 deaths were at homes for seniors.
Long term care standards has to be included in legislation as a central part of the Canadian health care system.
After all when it comes to long term care as you age, sooner or later you will likely need it, unless, of course you've already ...
It's a harsh wake-up call but an important one. Problems with long term care were flagged decades ago before the massive explosion of for profit homes became a thing and huge money maker. Conditions are even worse than they were in the 80s.
On April 16th Ipolitics reported that in Quebec "70 per cent of the dead lived in CHSLDs or long-term care residences (51 per cent), or other seniors’ residences (19.3 per cent)". [https://ipolitics.ca/2020/04/16/70-of-quebecs-covid-19-deaths-are-in-lon...
Yesterday, Premier Legault annouced that the number of COVID-19 long term care home deaths had climbed to 80% of Quebec's. Today a chyron (a message scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen) stated the 85% of deaths in Quebec involved those living in long-term care homes. Legault, like Ford in Ontario, has asked for 1,000 more soldiers to aid in the fight against the virus. Beyond the immediate emergency response to this disaster, there has to be an enormous reform of the entire long-term care system that involves better living conditions for residents, as well as better pay, training and working conditions for all workers in the homes.
In Ontario, while Ford has looked shaken at his TV presentations because of the impact of COVID-19, especially with regard to the large number of deaths at seniors care homes, his government is a major part of the problem.
This scandal also includes former Premier Mike Harris who privatized a large part of Ontario's care home system and now is the chair of the private sector's Chartwell Retirement Residences.
The private sector care homes are also major contributors to the Progressive Conservatives.
https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/pulpit-and-politics/2020/04/covid-19-ex...
As of April 20th "There were currently 112 COVID-19 outbreaks at long-term care homes across Ontario, representing the deaths of 240 residents and one staff member.", (https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/woodbridge-long-term-care-home-reports-six-co...) showing how poorly their privatization of long term care has worked out.
Nova Scotia's long term care homes also are facing catastrophic COVID-19 situations.
https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/nova-scotia-reports-2-more-deaths-at-northwo...
Long term care has been a gaping hole in healthcare in this country for decades. The needs increase as population ages and people can live longer. Employees are at the bottom without respect, support or living wages. The virus is exposing this system tragically.
It takes money and standards that need to be enforced and the government investing in infrastructure to change this. I don't see it happening. In fact, when the government spending from this covid crisis ends, I foresee a strong surge in fiscal conservstive restraint rising in popularity all over, the exact opposite of what needs to be done to properly address these issues.
‘Frontline workers do not have N95s but supervisors are wearing them’: Troubling allegations emerge at care homes hit by COVID-19
Confusion. Exhaustion. Fear. Tragedy.
This is the picture of the “unlawfully inadequate” response to the COVID-19 pandemic at three for-profit long-term care homes — alleged in intimate detail through hundreds of pages of submissions, internal communications, and written declarations from front-line workers.
The documentation filed this week by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to the Ontario labour relations board seeks immediate relief to “protect the lives of both employees and residents,” including an order to place the care homes under the direct control of the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
quote:
One written declaration from a worker at Altamont, where 28 residents have died, said employees were not fitted with N95 masks until the day after staff member Christine Mandegarian died from COVID-19.
“The day after Christine died, April 16, 2020, was the first time front-line workers were given N95 masks,” says the written declaration from personal support worker Karen Ellington, who has also since fallen ill with the virus.
“We were told ‘don’t throw it away, we don’t know when you’re getting another one.’ ”
Responsive Group Inc., the company that operates Anson Place and Eatonville, said it was committed to providing a safe environment for its staff and said it has been successful in obtaining additional PPE supplies to combat shortages and meet strict public health requirements.
“It was difficult to hear that some our staff feel we have not done everything possible to protect them throughout this crisis,” the emailed statement said. “We need to do better.”
quote:
SEIU represents some 60,000 front-line health workers, and wants the provincial labour board to order “immediate emergency orders” to protect its members and the residents in their care. The interventions sought by the union include orders directing employers to provide sufficient protective gear for workers, increase staffing, and provide transparent information on outbreaks.
“We are witnessing what happens when hollow words are met with failed action. That is why we are seeking an emergency hearing before the Board for immediate relief to our front-line members,” said the union’s president Sharleen Stewart in a statement.
“We will not stop until every worker is protected and every senior receives the care they deserve.”
A woman had a great deal of trouble getting her father out of a care home even though she had everything ready to care for him. Seniors who are lucid surely have the right to decide for themselves. Those who are not should have a family member as guardian not the government or a care home. As soon as there is sufficient PPE people should be permitted to visit dying family members "at their own risk". After a certain age you know every day could easily be your last so you want to live each day to the fullest. "Risking death" does not have the same meaning when you are 95. For those with dementia seeing family can be the last hold they have on reality.
Keeping family out seems more like keeping witnesses out.
The following news release from the Ontario Health Coalition outlines the desperate situation in Ontario's long-term care homes, which has been facilitated by the Ford government's actions.
https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/long-term-care-is-now-th...
The situation in Ontario and Quebec is now so desperate that both the Ford and Legault government have asked the federal government to send Canadian Forces soldiers to fight the desperate situation in their long-term care homes, with Legault asking for 1,000 military in addition to the 125 he already has.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/canadian-military-...
The Globe and Mail is reporting that aproximately 70% of Covid deaths are occurring in long-term care homes while I noted above that CBC reported that the same figure is 85% in Quebec, where there was widespread understaffing well before Covid-19 hit.
The Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) have gone to court, to seek "an order compelling three long-term care homes owned by Rykka Care Centres to comply with provincial infection control and health and safety standards," because the care homes have kept those sick with Covid-19 alongside the healthy. The ONA is also challenging the government's Public Health Ontario statement that "nurses treating residents in long-term care homes with COVID-19 should use surgical masks rather than the N95 version."
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-joins-quebec-in-s...
Many years ago we went through this in Quebec with my mother who had MS. By going into an institution which they were pushing for in order not to have to provide any home care, you lose the right to get back out. In the end she stayed home and my sister and I took 1 day a week off school to care for her so my father could get into town to do the business he needed and shopping. We were living in a rural area.
Home care was offering a bedridden woman help to get to the washroom at 10 am and 2 pm for 15 minutes. Leaving here alone the rest of the time and requiring her to be able to go in those times. It was not humane and we could not use that level of service.
This was in the 1980s - not sure what they do now.
The CBC National News reported last night reported that 65% of all Covid-19 deaths in Canada occurred in long-term care homes, thereby illustrating that this has been a nationwide problem, thereby illustrating that treating senior care homes as separate from the health care system, allowing minimal staffing, little or no Personal Protective Equipement (PPE), poor wages and benefits that often force workers to be employed in more than one place and thereby assisting in the spread of disease, and little to no government checkup of homes, has been a recipe for the disaster that is now unfolding. The entire system has to be changed.
The NDP BC government has begun to address some of the structural issues that have led to such tragic deaths, by taking over as the employer of all long-term careworkers, raising their wages and benefits, making them full-time workers who are employed by only one facility to minimize disease spread, but even there more remains to be done.
Military and hospital teams won’t stop long-term care nightmare; test, identify and relocate residents’ with COVID-19, union asks
The crisis in congregate living environments, like long-term care, can be solved by following the strategies of nations which are more successful: aggressive testing of all residents and staff and the relocation of those with COVID-19 to specialized facilities, CUPE said today. A limited number of military personnel will bolster hospital staff now deployed in outbreak homes beginning this weekend.
“Once an outbreak takes hold, all the other residents are extremely vulnerable to this virus. The requirements that staff move from room to room wearing the same mask and gown for their entire shift also creates a glaring weakness in the infection control strategy,” says Candace Rennick, secretary-treasurer of CUPE Ontario. “The solution is not to pour in loaned military and hospital staff into long-term care to treat the COVID-19 positive residents, it is to remove residents, so that the virus does not spread within the home.”
CUPE has consistently called for aggressive testing of all residents and staff in long-term care. “This is a key element in turning the dire situation in care homes across Ontario, around,” says Michael Hurley the president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE). “We need to test, identify and relocate. Our hospitals have the capacity now to receive these residents and can offer a higher level of infection control, nursing care and access to a wide range of medical specialties. Only a stubborn resistance to providing long-term care residents with access to hospitalization is standing in the way.”
As of April 23: Ontario hospitals are operating at below 70 per cent capacity; 516 Ontario long-term care residents had died of COVID-19 and there were 2,191 cases in 135 homes.
On Wednesday the Conseil pour la protection des malades (CPM), which works to protect the rights of patients, filed a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission, alleging "discrimination and exploitation of seniors who live or have lived in a long-term care home (CHSLD) or seniors residence since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis."
On CBC National News last night, the daughter of a resident of a Quebec long-term care home believes her mother died not from Covid-19 but from starvation and dehydration when many of the staff in the home left the job either sick or afraid for their own lives.
https://globalnews.ca/news/6857103/quebec-long-term-care-centres-coronav...
The bankruptcy of Premier Legault's proposal to seek to overcome Covid-19 by fostering the development of herd immunity illustrates how ethically bankrupt this regime is. This is a province with the highest Covid death toll in the country, the greatest number of infections, as well as the greatest number and percentage of deaths in senior care homes, but he still proposes to begin openning up the Quebec economy under these circumstances, putting everyone, but especially seniors and those with underlying health conditions, such as diabetes at risk.
https://www.toronto.com/news-story/9960228-legault-pushes-herd-immunity-...
Ontario nurses win court battle to secure access to PPE in long-term care homes
The Ontario Nurses’ Association says it has won a legal battle that will force four long-term care homes to immediately fix alleged safety issues for health-care workers.
According to court documents, filed by the ONA in mid-April, four Ontario long-term care homes have been allegedly restricting or denying the use of PPE in their facilities.
The homes named in the application include three owned by Rykka Care Centres Group—Eatonville Care Centre in Toronto, where at least 37 residents have died, Anson Place Centre in Haggersville, Ont., where at least 27 deaths have been attributed to the virus, and Hawthorne Place Care Centre in North York, where at least six residents have contracted COVID-19.
A separate application was filed against Henley Place, operated by Primacare Living Solutions, located in London, Ont.
In the documents, the ONA says that its members have “not been provided with readily available access to N95 respirators when providing care to residents with confirmed, suspected or presumed COVID-19.”
On Thursday, the ONA said they are relieved a ruling, by the Superior Ontario Court, ordered the homes to immediately rectify the safety concerns.
“It is truly a huge relief to know that after exhausting all other avenues, the Ontario Superior Court has agreed with ONA that these employers must follow health and safety practices to prevent the spread of infection among long-term care residents and the registered nurses and health professionals who care for them,” ONA President Vicki McKenna said in a written statement.....
An important thread on an awful failure of governmental fiduciary care over too long a period. We must not allow the abuse and elder-cide to continue. Hopefully averting the eyes has ended.
The sad reality is that for twenty years our elder care has been going from marginal to life threatening. During the time one of Canadians favorite jokes was the about the kids getting to pick the retirement home. The punchline of the joke assumed that many of our senior care homes were substandard. Canadians are some of the nicest people on the planet, just ask us.
Dr. Amit Arya, a palliative care specialist who works in nursing homes, discusses the systemic problems faced by these homes below.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-nursing-homes-conditions-1.5541155
'Absolutely Could Have Been Avoided': How One Nursing Home Director's Fast Actions May Have Saved Lives
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/long-term-care-covid-19-eatonvill...
"This care home has no COVID-19 deaths. Another one nearby has 39 deaths. Why?"
The numbers for deaths in long term care homes just keep getting worse.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/covid-19-trudeau-says-in-many-parts...
The situation is not improving in long term care facilities in Ontario.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-records-significant-spike-in-covid-19...
The flood of lawsuits in Canada over failing to deal adequately with the Covid-19 crisis has already started, with many of them invovling long-term care homes.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/coronavirus-lawsuits-insurance-nursing-homes-1.5...
As an aside, I can't help but notice that while Conrad Black, they threw away his Canadian citizenship when it suited him, is now printing crap saying that trying to fight Covid-19 is an overreaction, we're seeing asylum seekers, who have been attacked in the past by the likes of Black, are now in long-term care homes in Quebec, working in hot spots and serving Canadians in front line roles. Good on those folks for stepping up when so many others haven't, despite their residency situation. While those asylum seekers are actually helping things, Black and his ilk are doing the total opposite. When thinking of the state of our long-term care homes this week, that contrast really struck me and it's something I can't ignore:
https://magpiebrule.ca/2020/05/09/the-good-the-bad-and-the-connie/
Obviously we need a major overhaul of long-term care, but let's be frank, we also need straight talk about advance directives and the right to die under circumstances where we do NOT want to be kept alive. I'd say absolutely not dementia; please kill me (kindly). I think many people don't realise how horrific and dehumanising such a condition is.
The % of deaths from Covid-19 occurring in long-term homes keeps climbing to now hit 82% of all Covid-19 deaths. This is the highest percentage by far of such deaths occurring in any of the 14 nations examined, telling us how horrid our system of senior care is.
https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2020/05/07/82-of-canadas-covid-...
During Sunday's CBC The National, the broadcast showed the wretched living and working conditions found at many long term cares starting at 28:25 on the url below. It shows long term care worker staffing be changed from 4 residents to worker to 10 residents to worker in private homes, with workers begging inspectors to increase the staffing so that patient needs can be met and inspectors in Ontario saying there is nothing they can do as there are no regulations requiring this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb5C25jjoOk
Considering the wretched conditions for workers and residents vividly described in the CBC broadcast discussed in the previous post the Toronto Star's findings during an investigation of long-term care homes are hardly surprising.
An analysis of long-term care home deaths by the Toronto Star concluded that "For-profit nursing homes have four times as many COVID-19 deaths as city-run homes".
https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/05/08/for-profit-nursing-homes-hav...
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