2020-11-28 from theglobeandmail.com

Between March and August, the coronavirus killed at least 7,000 Canadians in long-term care facilities, exposing weaknesses in the system that authorities swore to fix. Now, experts in the field say we’re back where we started.

The pandemic claimed the lives of at least 7,000 elders living in nursing and retirement homes between March and August. More than 600 homes recorded COVID-19 deaths, almost all of them in Quebec and Ontario. One in every seven elders who was infected died. Those living in these group settings were 77 times more likely to die than their counterparts still living in homes and apartments.

Since September, there have been at least 2,000 more deaths in congregate settings such as nursing and retirement homes, and long-term wards in hospitals. Hundreds of facilities have been affected – some of them for a second time. The pandemic has also spread its tentacles more broadly; Manitoba, which was largely unscathed by the first wave, is now struggling with outbreaks in dozens of the province’s nursing homes, and the most deadly ones in the country, during the second wave. Alberta is not faring much better.

This second wave of death in facilities that house elders was not inevitable, but it was largely predictable. 

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