Ontario Health Coalition Calls for Urgent Improvements as Staffing and Care is Collapsing & Large Outbreaks Spread

"In the last 24 hours alone 18 residents have died and there have been 115 new reported COVID-19 infections in Ontario’s long-term care homes.

The second wave of COVID-19 hit long-term care on August 30 with the outbreak at Extendicare’s West End Villa in Ottawa. Over the following weeks, that outbreak grew and outbreaks spread across the city. By the end of the month, long-term care homes across the province were falling into outbreak, first into the hotspots, then from border to border across the south, into Simcoe Muskoka and up to Thunder Bay.

As of December 15, four-thousand five hundred and ninety-four residents and staff had been infected in the second wave (since September 1). Including yesterday’s death toll, the number of residents that have died in the second wave alone is more than 700.

Clearly the measures taken in and after Wave 1 were not sufficient, says the Ontario Health Coalition.

A new report released today by the Ontario Health Coalition does a deep dive into the policies and plans by the Ford government and reveals what has gone wrong..."