Outlook a bit brighter at long-term care homes compared to one year ago: CanAge

A Canadian seniors advocacy group is still cautious when talking about the future safety of long-term care home residents during the pandemic, but it admits, things are much better now than in March of 2020.

Many issues related to long-term care came to light in the first year of the pandemic: staff shortages, room sharing, and a lack of investments in things like infection, prevention and control (IPAC).

“We have had decades of neglect in long-term care,” Laura Tamblyn-Watts, CEO of national seniors advocacy organization CanAge, tells CityNews' The Rob Snow Show, Thursday, March 11. “This is what created an environment that was just ready for the infection to take over.”

The good news for now, she adds, is that governments have prioritized rolling out COVID-19 vaccines within long-term care homes first. Ottawa just finished administering second doses to both staff and residents in the city's 28 homes. 

Tamblyn-Watts says an outbreak now is not as scary as it would have been last spring, because there's protection.

“We were terrified. We saw what was happening in Asia around the March 11 mark, in Europe; the long-term care devastation in France and in Italy. And at this moment last year we were begging government to prioritize long-term care, because we [could] see it starting,” Tamblyn-Watts says. “A year ago, the first [long-term care home] staff [COVID-19 infection] occurred and we have not had a spot in death in long-term care since.”

Epidemiologist now say that a third wave of the pandemic is eminent, and will be dominated by COVID-19 variants. Tamblyn-Watts says the vaccines may not be the universal solution we were looking for. 

“I think we're going to have a bit of a lift from the vaccines, but I think it's not going to be as much as the lift people think it is.”

The head of CanAge says the most important thing to do right now is get the vaccines into as many arms as possible, prioritizing care givers and elderly residents that could end up in a long-term care home, to avoid seeing other devastating outbreaks led by variants.