New Ontario COVID-19 data shows ‘appalling’ death numbers in long-term care
In a surprise data release Sunday, the Ontario government revealed new details on the scale of the ongoing COVID-19 disaster in the province's long-term-care homes.
Nearly 180 outbreaks in seniors' homes from Windsor to Cornwall. Four facilities with more than 100 sick residents. Five with more than 20 dead in Toronto alone. And in Ontario's worst outbreak - at the Orchard Villa long-term-care home in Pickering - 43 are now dead, fully 10 more fatal cases than had been public just the previous day.
The new data - a home-by-home breakdown of all long-term-care facility outbreaks - was posted Sunday with little fanfare along with the province's daily update on COVID-19 case data. The release follows weeks of criticism that Ontario's official data has been vastly under-reporting the true scale of cases and deaths in seniors' homes.
It also comes just three days after the Star published its own home-by-home breakdown of every available public record of a COVID-19 outbreak in Ontario. On Thursday, the Star published a map that listed nearly 100 more long-term-care home deaths than the province was reporting the same day in data from a central reporting system that has been criticized for being too slow and out-of-date.
Also on Thursday, the Ministry of Health began simultaneously reporting a much more current total of cases and deaths, sourced instead from the ministry that oversees Ontario's long-term care homes, but with little other detail.
The toll of long-term-care outbreaks is "appalling," said Patricia Spindel, president of Spindel and Associates, a health and social services consulting firm. "Just pure and simple, it's appalling."
She said local medical officers of health should be ordering hospital teams into homes that have high death rates, as Durham's chief medical officer did in the case of Orchard Villa last week. But in many cases, such moves might be too little too late, she said.
"The province should've had the capacity to take over homes with high death rates and put in nurse managers and teams and they should have been able to do it the minute they saw the death rates going up," said Spindel, former president of the non-profit Concerned Friends of Ontario Citizens in Care Facilities and former associate dean of health sciences at Humber College.
Responding to questions from the Star about the new data Sunday, a spokesperson for Health Minister Christine Elliott said the government recognizes the need to keep people informed "as the situation in long-term-care homes continues to be top of mind for all Ontarians."
Spokesperson Hayley Chazan also acknowledged the delay in data that had been sourced from the Integrated Public Health Information System (iPHIS), which the province's 34 regional health units use to report case data to Public Health Ontario.
"We have also been clear that we want to ensure we continue to do everything we can to provide the public and media with the most relevant and timely information possible," Chazan said in an email.
"That's why last week we began reporting on data from iPHIS as well as administrative data reported to the Ministry of Long-Term Care from its inspectors."
Laura Tamblyn Watts, CEO of the national seniors advocacy group CanAge, says the new numbers reveal both a "broken" long-term-care system and institutional ageism embedded in how we make choices about who to care about.
"I think most people would agree (long-term care) was broken long before COVID and has been crying out for reform. So we're seeing a system that couldn't already bear its own weight," she said.
"Because the system was broken first and we chose not to put resources into helping older people, we're starting to see now the result in terms of lives lost and this report is giving us a greater and clearer picture of that. But I'm certain that it still is an underestimation."
The province's new data is not a complete listing of seniors home outbreaks and is still behind some publicly available sources.
Most notably, Sunday's release - which is based on data the facilities self-report to the Ministry of Long-Term Care - does not include any records from Ontario retirement homes, which account for nearly 80 deaths and some of the worst outbreaks in the province.
It's also behind numbers released by some specific facility operators. The Mon Sheong care home in Toronto on Sunday confirmed 27 residents had died of COVID-19; the province's data still listed 24.
The records are, however, far more complete than had been made public just a week ago via iPHIS, the reporting system Public Health Ontario has used to track the unfolding pandemic in case-by-case detail.
The province publishes a database of information from iPHIS each morning, but that data includes no specific detail on whether a case happened in an outbreak; the province had been releasing a total of long-term-care home deaths via iPHIS that was far below what the Star tallied from public health unit websites and other sources.
Long-term care homes are meant for residents who need frequent assistance and access to 24-hour nursing. The cost of staying at a long-term-care home may be paid by the government. The facilities can be run by either public or for-profit operators, and are regulated by a separate ministry.
Most retirement homes serve residents who need less intensive care, and costs are generally paid out-of-pocket.
Spindel said she suspects more deaths are occurring in private retirement homes that are not reflected in official statistics.
"As soon as you're housing over 100 people together in one place, then you're increasing the risk that they're going to get (COVID-19) ... especially if you have staff working in different facilities as you have in long-term care," she said.
Asked whether the province plans to release similar data on retirement home outbreaks, Chazan said: "We continue to look for ways to improve our public reporting and are committed to being as transparent as possible as we work collectively to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak in Ontario."
The records published Sunday include a facility-by-facility breakdown of active and resolve outbreaks, including confirmed resident cases, resident deaths and staff cases.
The Star will continue to maintain a separate tally including more-current data, where available.
As of Sunday evening, the Star has counted at least 742 deaths in 258 retirement or long-term-care home outbreaks in the province. These are 10 deadliest:
Orchard Villa Long Term Care Home, Pickering - 233 beds
144 resident cases, 43 resident deaths and 45 staff cases
Eatonville Care Centre, Etobicoke - 247 beds
173 resident cases, 37 resident deaths and 66 staff cases
Seven Oaks, Scarborough - 249 beds
108 resident cases, 34 resident deaths and 24 staff cases
Altamont Care Community, Scarborough - 159 beds
125 resident cases, 32 resident deaths, 45 staff cases and one staff death
Pinecrest Nursing Home, Bobcaygeon - 65 beds
53 resident cases, 29 resident deaths and 34 staff cases
Anson Place Care Centre, Hagersville - 61 beds
71 resident cases, 27 resident deaths and 33 staff cases
Mon Sheong Home for the Aged, Toronto - 105 beds
54 resident cases, 26 resident deaths and 16 staff cases
Almonte Country Haven, Almonte - 82 beds
49 resident cases, 25 resident deaths and 17 staff cases
Forest Heights Revera, Kitchener - 240 beds
118 resident cases, 24 resident deaths and 47 staff cases
Isabel and Arthur Meighen Manor, Toronto - 168 beds
84 resident cases, 22 resident deaths and 26 staff cases
With research contributed by Sue Gowans and Iacovos Michael
Ed Tubb is an assignment editor and a contributor focused on crime and justice for the Star. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @edtubb
Kenyon Wallace is a Toronto-based investigative reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @KenyonWallace or reach him via email: kwallace@thestar.ca