If you, like me, were wondering how COVID-19 has become such a killer in long-term care homes, then read this three-day diary of a young orderly in a Montreal care home and it will all become clear.
I don't need to summarize the article here - it speaks for itself - but suffice to say that pretty much everything that could be done wrongly or poorly, is being (or at least was - the health authority responsible for the home claims that most things have been fixed since this article was written and, who knows, maybe they have). I'm sure not all care homes are the same, but they are probably all under-staffed, under-equipped and over-stretched.
Anyone considering responding to Quebec premier François Legault's healtfelt plea for people to step foward to help with the personnel issues Quebec's care home, will probably think twice if they read this diary.
UPDATE
Deaths from the virus in long-term care homes is not a perculiarly Canadian phenomenon - pretty much every country has had a problem with it to some degree. The EXTENT of the problem here IS peculiar, though.
About 81% of all of Canada's COVID-19 deaths have occurred in care homes, about twice the global average. Many countries seem to have been able to keep the proportion of deaths in care homes down to 20-30% of the overall total. With Canada's figure at over 80%, this suggests a very serious systemic problem that needs to be addressed. Maybe reports like this one above will help make that come about.
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