COVID-19 is responsible for the deaths of at least 29 residents in Ontario nursing and retirement homes, more than double the number that provincial officials reported on Monday.
At least 29 deaths of residents in Ontario nursing and retirement homes have been linked to COVID-19, more than double the number that provincial officials reported on Monday.
The growing death toll is based on information gathered by CBC News from local public health units across the province.
At least 22 facilities for seniors are currently facing outbreaks of COVID-19, according to the public health units, raising fears that the pandemic will result in more deaths in long-term care homes.
As of Wednesday, the illness caused by novel coronavirus had killed 40 people in Ontario and 107 countrywide. Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate chief medical officer of health, said Tuesday afternoon that 11 of those deaths were residents in long-term care homes, although she acknowledged that the figure was not up to date.
But CBC News found that in addition to the deaths of 12 residents and one volunteer worker at the Pinecrest Nursing Home in Bobcaygeon, there were another 17 COVID-19-related deaths at long-term care and retirement homes stretching from Sarnia to Orleans.
“It’s heartbreaking because people in those homes are very vulnerable,” said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, which includes health care unions and patient advocacy groups.
“It’s such a serious and deadly disease that I am very frightened for what’s going to happen across Ontario’s long-term care homes now.”
Virus may have spread by staff, visitors
Since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, Ontario’s Ministry of Health progressively ramped up measures to try to keep COVID-19 out of l