Prime Minister says national LTC standards conversations with provinces “coming along” but “not as fast as” he would like

By: Tessie Sanci

The federal government is in active conversations with the provinces on national long-term care (LTC) standards, and will begin a program by first working with provinces who are eager to participate, said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a virtual roundtable discussion with health care professionals on Feb. 11.

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of policy and co-chair of Ryerson University’s National Institute of Ageing (NIA) said he did not believe that the process to develop national standards had to start from scratch and that it would be possible to consider existing standards, but that officials would have to study those standards to determine if they are suitable for a federal program.

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Neglect in Long-Term Care Homes Is “A Nuclear Bomb of Tragedy,” Toronto Doctor Says

By: JUDY GERSTEL

Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the NIA, doesn’t just care for seniors in his role as a geriatrician at Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Hospital. The young doctor cares fiercely about older people. Since last spring, the 34-year-old physician has stepped up as a fearlessly outspoken advocate for seniors suffering disproportionally from the pandemic. “People over 60,” he says, “have accounted for 96.5 per cent of COVID-19 deaths in Canada.”

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Coronavirus variants are spreading throughout Canada. Is it still safe to reopen?

By Emerald Bensadoun

“This is not the time for us to start letting up and reopening too quickly, especially when we have all three types of COVID variants now that we’re concerned about, present in Canada and being detected in the community, even in cases where they’re not related to recent travel,” said Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the NIA.

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Left for dead

By: Danielle Da Silva

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the NIA, said in other provinces an outbreak of that size would trigger an immediate visit to the home by the relevant health authorities and an offer to provide staffing and personal protective equipment to the operator.

"Too many of these homes initially were left for dead because you had a (health) minister at the time who was famously quoted as saying, well these deaths are sadly tragic, but they’re ‘unavoidable,’" Sinha said, referring to comments made by Friesen to CBC Manitoba in mid-October.

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What Canada could do to take advantage of the lull in COVID-19 vaccine shipments

By: Lauren Pelley

"Israel worked around the clock to vaccinate as quickly as possible," said NIA Associate Fellow, Dr. Nathan Stall, one of the table members. And it goes beyond speed, he said.

"My fear is you're going to have a vaccine booking system that's going to be like purchasing playoff tickets for a sports team where everyone's going to line up, crash the system, try and book as fast as they can," he said. "And you're going to leave behind the people who need the vaccine the most."

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COVID-19 vaccine queue-jumping alleged at Ontario nursing home

By: Melissa Mancini & David Common

"If these allegations are proved to be correct, this is just completely unacceptable," said Dr. Samir Sinha, the director of health policy research at the NIA. "We have so many people who are vulnerable of dying from COVID.… This actually means we're wasting doses and we're actually costing lives."

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Long-term care in the age of Covid, and beyond

By: Susan Goldberg

That would help the public purse, said Halifax-based actuary Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, director of research for financial security at the NIA. She pointed to research by the Canadian Institute for Health Information showing that, with the right level of support, about one in 12 people in LTC could remain at home. A report from Queen’s University last fall said between one in nine and one in five seniors currently in LTC would benefit from home care.

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Fact or Fiction: Are ‘circuit breaker’ lockdowns going to cut it? Or is it time for #COVIDZero?

“We’re actually calling this more of a ‘mockdown’ rather than a lockdown,” said Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the NIA. “Things were a lot stricter in March because we were really scared. … I think a lot of us were taking it more seriously because we didn’t know what it could do.”

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Reports of elder abuse soar outside of long-term care in Ontario

“When older people are the most vulnerable, they become a lot more dependent very quickly on family members, friends, neighbours et cetera, and you can start imagining how that really opens them up to becoming easy targets or easy prey,” said Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the NIA.

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Are Hamilton’s long-term-care homes as scary as they might seem?

By: Steve Buist

There’s a growing perception, it seems, that LTC homes have become death traps for the elderly, that frail and vulnerable seniors are being warehoused in awful conditions and places, featuring Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the NIA.

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Alberta’s auditor-general to review province’s COVID-19 response in continuing care facilities

By: Carrie Tait

Samir Sinha, director of health policy research and co-chair of the National Institute on Ageing, argues NIA’s data on long-term care facilities and COVID-19 demonstrates the need for Alberta’s investigation.

“We have to figure out how we allowed this story to unfold in Alberta,” he said. “Alberta is the outlier across Canada.”

NIA has logged COVID-19 outbreaks at 73 per cent of Alberta’s long-term care facilities, compared to 62 per cent of those in Ontario. In British Columbia, 39 per cent of long-term care facilities have been hit with outbreaks, according to NIA. Meanwhile, these facilities account for 64 per cent of all COVID-19-related deaths in Alberta, putting the province in the middle of the pack.

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Creating a national home care system for seniors

The pandemic has exposed glaring problems with many long-term care homes and Canadians are grappling with where they want to age. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, an actuary and the Director of Financial Security at the National Institute of Aging says home care is the way forward.

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As COVID-19 exposes long-term care crisis, efforts grow to keep more seniors at home

By: Nicole Ireland

The benefit of increased home-care investment in Canada is getting long-overdue attention, now that COVID-19 has torn through long-term care homes, killing thousands of residents and exposing lethal weaknesses in the system, said Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research for the National Institute on Ageing. "Long-term care is at a crossroads," said Sinha, who is also the

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David Staples: If COVID doesn't get us, confinement syndrome and 'diseases of despair' just might

“This loneliness, this social isolation, this depression, the worsening mental health issues can really have significantly negative consequences, things that aren’t tallied up unless they translate into suicides and overdose deaths,” says Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the NIA.

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Israel’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout success provides examples for Ontario to emulate

By: Jeff Gray

Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the NIA and assistant scientific director of the province’s science table, said while vaccine supply is clearly an issue, Israel enacted some changes that maximized its ability to inoculate quickly.

“They treated this as an emergency and they vaccinated as fast as possible,” Dr. Stall said of Israel’s move to prioritize vaccinations for seniors, rather than a list of different groups.

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Kicking out for-profit operators won't be enough to fix long-term care, says geriatrician

As advocates call for an end to for-profit long-term care homes in Ontario, geriatrician Samir Sinha says proper funding is a needed first step to stem widespread COVID-19 deaths. "People have focused in on this piece and said, 'Well, this is the problem,'" said Sinha, a physician for Sinai Health in Toronto.

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Other factors at play in seniors who died after COVID-19 vaccine, experts say

Experts say that a handful of seniors who died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine were most likely killed by other factors such as other illnesses, old age or dementia and that it doesn’t mean the vaccine isn’t safe for elderly people. Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the NIA discusses with CBC.

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In This Together: A Bell Let's Talk Day Special

"There is a crisis." Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, explains the massive gaps in healthcare that the past year has exposed and how it's affecting older Canadians' mental health in CTV's Bell Let's Talk Day primetime special.

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Reports of seniors falling ill or dying after getting dose of COVID-19 vaccine don't tell the whole story

By: Lauren Pelley

In the case of outbreaks in long-term care homes, it's important to remember that while one dose offers some level of protection, it's not the full amount that results from the two-dose regimen for either of the vaccines currently approved in Canada, said Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

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