‘Like a war zone’: COVID-19 shines light on dark aspects of long-term care

Thestar.com
Jan. 26, 2021
Kim Zarzour

It’s a beautiful mid-winter day, the sun shining on crisp white snow, and Sharron Cooke would like nothing more than to breathe in the fresh air.

She can’t.

For more than a year she has been confined to her room on the third floor of Newmarket Health Centre; she can only look out the window and wish.

She wishes, too, she could see her friends and neighbours in the building, but she can’t do that, either.

They, too, are locked in isolation.

Most don’t have phones in their rooms, many don’t have family to visit, aren’t able to change TV channels, just languish and wait for the pandemic to end.

There is depression here, anxiety, lost friendships and profound loneliness.

“It’s very bleak,” she says, “like a war zone and we’re battling the unknown.”

And it’s a situation that cries out for change.

York Region mayors committed Jan. 14 to take a leadership role pushing the province for immediate change.

“I believe a generation has been let down here,” said Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti as regional council approved a staff report with recommendations for the Ontario Long-term Care COVID-19 Commission.

The 46-page report says the pandemic has had a profound impact on an already flawed system. It calls for more funding and resources, better staffing and oversight.

While COVID-19 case counts may be starting to decline, the number of homes requiring help and direction in York Region has risen.

The province announced Jan.18 that Mackenzie Health is taking over management of Villa Leonardo Gambin, a Woodbridge long-term-care home in its fourth outbreak since Nov. 20 with 119 cases and two deaths.

In Aurora, the medical officer of health ordered Willows Estate, in outbreak since Dec. 24, to improve staffing and infection control after inspections at the home uncovered problems.

They are the two most recent interventions. Public health issued similar orders to Villa Da Vinci in Woodbridge and Langstaff Care in Richmond Hill.

In the second wave of the pandemic, 26 of the region’s 28 long-term-care homes have had outbreaks, two-thirds of the region’s COVID-19 deaths have occurred here, and residents have been in lockdown for months.

Behind those numbers are tragic stories: an elderly parent who moved into a home, then died a week later from the virus; a mother dropped by busy staff in her outbreak-burdened home, then sent to hospital where she caught COVID-19; a formerly healthy senior who no longer recognizes his loved ones, who no longer wishes to live.

And then there’s Cooke, fortunate to remain strong, but worried about fellow residents she hasn’t seen in months.

Cooke has lived in the Eagle Street facility -- one of two operated by the Region of York -- for more than 12 years.

She enjoyed the dinners, casino nights, movies and gatherings that made everyone feel like family.

Now that’s gone, replaced with closed doors and endless TV-watching as the home struggles through a 76-day outbreak -- the longest in York Region.

As president of the Ontario Association of Residents Councils, Cooke takes part in weekly online/phone coffee chats and helps co-ordinate weekly resident forums for mutual support.

Cooke says caregivers have been working heroically to ease the loneliness. These “team members” put their heart and soul into caring and deserve better, she says.

“They’re the ones who are with residents day in day out, they know their pain, they know their happiness, they know what they’re suffering. They need to be supported and celebrated.”

At Newmarket Health, they have a tradition. When a resident dies, the home drapes their body with a “dignity quilt.”

As the funeral home carries them away, family, residents, staff and caregivers follow, reciting a friendship prayer and singing Amazing Grace.

“It’s a beautiful, beautiful ceremony,” Cooke says.

But the pandemic stopped that tradition and it breaks her heart.

Now, at the tail end of the home’s long outbreak, with vaccinations under way, she feels a glimmer of hope that this too shall pass -- and maybe, shall change.

Cooke agrees with the words of Dee Lender, executive director of the Residents’ Council: Decision-makers must take action to ensure “we are not left with a group of people who have physically survived, but whose spirits have been broken.”

“They deserve quality of life,” Cooke says, “and they deserve peace at the end of their journey.”