Seniors advocate calls for new safety measures in care homes

A report from B.C.’s seniors’ advocate calls for mandatory vaccinations for all staff in assisted living and long-term care homes, along with booster shots for residents, demands that the province had already started to act upon.

The report from Isobel Mackenzie says seniors in all types and levels of care home are three-and-a-half times more likely to contract COVID-19 and 33 times more likely to die of it.

Her review finds seniors, especially those in care facilities, have been the hardest hit by the pandemic because they are the most frequent victims of the virus.

Provincial data shows just under 11-hundred residents of care facilities have died in COVID-19 outbreaks between January of last year and September of this year, while the total number of all pandemic-related deaths in B.C. is almost two-thousand.

Mackenzie is also recommending expanding paid sick-leave provisions for staff, hiring more registered nurses, eliminating shared rooms and increasing the scope and frequency of COVID-19 testing.