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REPORT: Shocking Number of Long-Term Care Homes with Majority of Residents Infected – Data updated to January 19
Posted: January 22, 2021
(January 22, 2021)
Having become alarmed at how many long-term care homes have COVID-19 outbreaks that are out of control in which a significant proportion of the residents have contracted the virus, we set out to review all of the large outbreaks in the second wave to date and see what the situation is. A growing number of long-term care homes have a significant portion of their residents infected. Even more disturbingly, we have found dozens of homes where the majority of the people who live there have been confirmed to have COVID-19. Of the large Ontario long-term care home outbreaks in the second wave (as of January 19)
- 75 outbreaks include 1 in 4 or more residents infected;
- 64 outbreaks include 1 in 3 or more residents infected;
- 40 outbreaks include 1 in 2 or more residents infected, and ;
- 17 outbreaks include 3 in 4 or more residents infected.
It is important to note that the homes are not operating at 100% capacity; that is to say, not every bed is actually filled. While Ontario’s long-term care homes were operating at nearly 100% capacity at the beginning of the pandemic, that is certainly no longer true, as some residents have been taken out or unfortunately passed away, and as homes with 4-bed shared rooms are by attrition required to limit shared rooms to 2-beds maximum. At the beginning of the pandemic, Ontario had more than 78,000 long-term care residents. The total is now approximately 72,000.
We have searched for information on how many beds were actually filled at the start of the outbreak in each of the following long-term care homes. Where we could find this information, we included it. For the rest of the homes, we calculated the proportion of residents infected with COVID-19 as a percentage of the total number of beds. This understates the severity of the outbreak.
Twenty-three of these outbreaks are resolved, but 53 of these long-term care homes are still in active outbreak. The case numbers are up-to-date as of January 19, 2021. Details of these outbreaks and sources for the case numbers can be found in our latest Large Outbreaks in Health Care Settings report: https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/report-wave-2-continues-to-devastate-long-term-care-far-surpassing-the-1st-wave/.
