Carrying their scrubs in a bag, army personell leave Eatonville Care Centre in Toronto. Ontario Premier Doug Ford requested help from the army last month when the need for staff at the worst-hit long-term-homes became dire.
Key moments in Ontario’s slow response to the COVID-19 outbreak in nursing homes
Two weeks after consistent and dramatic infection spread Ontario Premier Doug Ford said nursing homes were “turning into the frontlines of this battle.” But the frontline was formed much sooner.
Carrying their scrubs in a bag, army personell leave Eatonville Care Centre in Toronto. Ontario Premier Doug Ford requested help from the army last month when the need for staff at the worst-hit long-term-homes became dire.
Since the SARS outbreak in 2003, a steady drumbeat of official guidelines and recommendations has delivered a consistent message: Seniors are especially susceptible to viral infections. Nursing homes are hotbeds for their spread. Unless protected, these facilities, that are supposed to house and protect our most vulnerable, will be on the frontline of the battle against the next contagion.
While these reports left instructions on how homes should prepare, events beginning abroad at the start of 2020 sent up signal flares that illuminated its advance. The coronavirus was new, yes, and particularly contagious and destructive to old people, but like other respiratory outbreaks before it, primed to tear through nursing homes.
Yet on April 13, after two weeks of consistent and dramatic infection spread – internal provincial government data obtained by the Star showed an average daily jump in deaths of 20 per cent in Ontario – the federal seniors minister said “we didn’t have a playbook” for how to counter the contagion’s lethal rampage through long-term care homes.
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Three days later, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said nursing homes “are turning into the frontlines of this battle.”
But the frontline was formed much sooner:
As of the publishing of this story, 75% of the 1,300 COVID-19 deaths in Ontario have been nursing home residents.
