About 40% of January 2022 COVID-19 deaths in BC tied to long-term care outbreaks | The Canadian News

As British Columbia continues to grapple with the fifth pandemic wave, its top doctor has confirmed that roughly 40 percent of its COVID-19 deaths in January have been related to long-term care outbreaks.

There are around 60 outbreaks of the virus in long-term care, acute care and assisted or independent living facilities across the province.

Age continues to be the “most important risk factor” in dealing with the virus, said Dr. Bonnie Henry, in a briefing held on the two-year anniversary of the first case detected in BC


Click to play video: 'New national standards draft provides blueprint to improve Canadian long-term care'



New national standards draft provides blueprint to improve Canadian long-term care


New national standards draft provides blueprint to improve Canadian long-term care

“Nobody has suffered more than our seniors and elders,” she said. “We need to pause and remember the impacts across families and across communities in British Columbia where we’ve lost so many, particularly our seniors and elders.”

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Read more:

‘Certainly been a long two years’: BC marks COVID-19 anniversary

Most of people who died from a COVID-19 case unrelated to long-term care outbreaks in BC this month were “older people with underlying illnesses,” Henry added, a “high proportion” of whom were not fully or partially-immunized.

Her comments come as Canada passes a tragic marker: 16,000 deaths in long-term care since the pandemic began.

More than 34 per cent of Canada’s 6,029 long-term care homes are experiencing an outbreak, according to the latest figures from the National Institute on Aging.

That’s twice as many homes as the second-highest peak in long-term care outbreaks, when 1,000 homes were infected last January, according to Dr. Samir Sinha, NIA’s director of health policy research.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, he noted NIA’s data shows that BC has done a better job of keeping infections down than some other provinces.

“It feels like they have made some progress in terms of how they’re applying lessons learned,” he said.


Click to play video: 'New long-term care standards'



New long-term care standards


New long-term care standards

Despite calls from experts, advocacy groups and the families of residents in long-term care, however, BC has not wavered in its fifth-wave restriction of permitting only one “essential visitor” to visit each resident.

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Henry said Friday this approach balances transmission and outbreak risk with the physical and mental health needs of long-term care residents.

In a Global News interview, however, a long-term care researcher called the policy “ridiculous.”

“[In] Ontario, we managed to get an essential caregiver policy with two people that have had access even during the outbreaks, ”said Vivian Stamatopoulos, associate criminology professor at Ontario Tech University and co-founder of Canadians United for Long-Term Care Standards.

“It is ridiculous to me that your government has not done that for these families. I have met with many British Columbia long-term care families and what they have been through is traumatic to a level I cannot put properly into words. ”

Read more:

Long-term care struggling with ‘staggering’ COVID outbreaks even as Omicron stabilizes

This week, the Health Standards Organization released the draft of a long-called-for set of national standards for long-term care in Canada – a blueprint for governments to improve care in facilities nationwide.

The document contains new sections that focus on governance and collecting data for quality improvement as well as a section on diversity, equity, inclusion and cultural safety.

It also clearly defines what a designated support person, caregiver or essential caregiver is.

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“A person or persons chosen by a resident to participate in the resident’s ongoing care,” the newly-included definition states. They are not members of the LTC home’s workforce, it adds.

“Residents have the right to include or not include any of their designated support persons in any aspect of their personal and other care, and to change who they wish to identify as a designated support person.”


Click to play video: 'Strict visitor restrictions remain in place at BC care homes'



Strict visitor restrictions remain in place at BC care homes


Strict visitor restrictions remain in place at BC care homes – Jan 20, 2022

Highlights in the document for Stamatopoulos include an emphasis on improving workplace conditions in long-term care homes, so that resident care can improve, and an emphasis on the right of residents to choose to live with risk.

She lamented, however, the lack of teeth in the document and the omission of what she called “the elephant in the room” – eliminating the for-profit long-term care model.

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“Nobody is saying to overnight buy up all the for-profit homes, but what we would and we should have seen in this document which is glaringly absent… was indeed the aspect of ownership,” she explained.

“Frankly the experts I’ve spoken to agree with me that there is no getting around actual improvements until we get rid of the for-profit model.”

In its last federal budget, Ottawa committed $ 3 billion to improving long-term care, but it has not committed to implementing the new recommended national standards.

with files from The Canadian Press and Global News’ Aya Al-Hakim and Saba Aziz

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© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.



Reference-globalnews.ca

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