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Don't Forget About Retirement Homes!
Dec. 16th, 2020 12:38 pmIt's well known that staff and residents of Long Term Care homes have been amongst the hardest hit by Covid-19. But far less attention has been paid to those living and working in retirement homes.
That's a mistake because in Ontario alone, there has been a 70% increase in outbreaks and a 65% increase in staff infections in retirement homes just since September:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-retirement-homes-testing-covid-1.5842558?cmp=rss
There could be many reasons for this. Maybe it's down to an overall lack of understanding of the differences between the two types of homes. Maybe part of it is a knee-jerk distaste for homes under private ownership (as most retirement residences are), a perception that they all value profit at the expense of resident health and well-being.
In any case, we need to get rapid testing available in these places, and rapidly! Some of the newer generations of rapid tests may even be conducive to self-testing, whether by staff or residents who are fairly self-sufficient.
Vaccination of both staff and residents of retirement homes should also be a high priority. In fact, many residents of retirement homes are quite mobile and able to get to the vaccination clinics on their own: for that reason they might, unlike Long Term Care residents, be good candidates for vaccines like the Pfizer ones which must be administered from a central location due to storage requirements. Once vaccinated, they would then be less likely to CONTRIBUTE to further community spread, which is a risk too with the more active seniors in our community.
On balance, looking after retirement homes and their people is actually less complex than all those thorny problems endemic to Long Term Care. It would be a fairly quick win, a way to earn brownie points with the aging population, who are definitely a force to be reckoned with at the ballot box!
That's a mistake because in Ontario alone, there has been a 70% increase in outbreaks and a 65% increase in staff infections in retirement homes just since September:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-retirement-homes-testing-covid-1.5842558?cmp=rss
There could be many reasons for this. Maybe it's down to an overall lack of understanding of the differences between the two types of homes. Maybe part of it is a knee-jerk distaste for homes under private ownership (as most retirement residences are), a perception that they all value profit at the expense of resident health and well-being.
In any case, we need to get rapid testing available in these places, and rapidly! Some of the newer generations of rapid tests may even be conducive to self-testing, whether by staff or residents who are fairly self-sufficient.
Vaccination of both staff and residents of retirement homes should also be a high priority. In fact, many residents of retirement homes are quite mobile and able to get to the vaccination clinics on their own: for that reason they might, unlike Long Term Care residents, be good candidates for vaccines like the Pfizer ones which must be administered from a central location due to storage requirements. Once vaccinated, they would then be less likely to CONTRIBUTE to further community spread, which is a risk too with the more active seniors in our community.
On balance, looking after retirement homes and their people is actually less complex than all those thorny problems endemic to Long Term Care. It would be a fairly quick win, a way to earn brownie points with the aging population, who are definitely a force to be reckoned with at the ballot box!
