There’s so much that wasn’t known about COVID-19. But one thing that was easily foreseeable was the devastating effect it would have in long-term-care homes.
This disease disproportionally affects elderly people and those with preexisting medical conditions and it thrives in close quarters — the very definition of long-term-care homes.
On top of that were years of warnings from health care experts, coroner’s inquests, auditor general reports and a recent public inquiry about how badly understaffed these homes are, even at the best of times. And these are far from the best of times.
It’s hard to imagine how that could have been illustrated any more clearly or tragically than through the horror that has unfolded insideRésidence Herron, a long-term-care home in the Montreal suburb of Dorval.
At least 31 people have died in the home, which is now under police investigation for the deplorable conditions that left many residents in the 150-bed facility unfed and uncared for to the point that Premier François Legault calls it “gross negligence.”
We can all hope those conditions are an aberration. But we already know that a great many other homes are struggling to cope with the disease and those challenges will only grow as more residents and staff contract COVID-19.
The Pinecrest Nursing Home in Bobcaygeon, Ont., has already lost close to half the residents of the 65-bed facility.
In fact, across Canada roughly half the deaths from COVID-19 are linked to long-term-care homes, and the number of deaths in these facilities is expected to keep on rising.
That’s why on Saturday the federal public health agency made a series of recommendations aimed at curbing the spread in long-term-care homes, including limiting staff to working in a single facility.
The question, though, is why every province hasn’t taken that step already.
British Columbia made that move three weeks ago. Yet Ontario — where there are at least 89 outbreaks in long-term-care homes — still hasn’t done it, or even said that it will.
“We’re still learning,” Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott said on Monday.
Learning as a crisis evolves and adapting responses to changing needs is, of course, what all governments must do.
But this lesson was learned in Ontario — or at least it certainly should have been — in 2003 during the SARS outbreak, when patients and health-care workers moving between facilities spread the disease.
It’s also a lesson that has already been applied in Ontario when it comes to cross-border health-care workers who were told to pick their work location — Windsor or Detroit, but not both.
Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate chief medical officer of health, says people working in multiple long-term-care homes are contributing to the spread of COVID-19. She says stopping the practice, even now, would make a difference.
It won’t be easy, but it must be done.
Personal support workers, who provide the bulk of the daily care in long-term-care homes, are badly underpaid and overworked on normal days, let alone in the midst of a pandemic. And the way the system has been allowed to operate means these workers are often held to part-time hours, forcing them to cobble together jobs at multiple homes just to make a living.
Ontario cannot afford to let this go on any longer. It must fix this broken system that leaves workers underpaid and overworked, homes badly understaffed and residents in danger, and ramp up COVID-19 testing.Premier Doug Ford says these “front-line heroes have our backs. We must have theirs.”
The way to do that is requiring full-time hours in one home and fund proper staffing levels so the work can be done well and safely for everyone.
Ontario’s most vulnerable residents deserve no less.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2020/04/13/ontario-must-stop-the-spread-of-covid-19-in-long-term-care-homes.html
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