Lack of medical care contributed to nursing home deaths: report

By: Karen Howlett

Dr. Samir Sinha, the Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA and expert adviser to CIHI, said residents sickened with non COVID-19 conditions were not sent to hospital because of physician absences at the homes and a lack of medical care. For those residents afflicted with COVID-19, he said, “blatant discrimination” was behind the decision not to transfer many of them to hospital.

“The overwhelming narrative was if patients [in nursing homes] get COVID, don’t send them to hospital,” Dr. Sinha said. “That narrative really shortchanged the situation for many of these residents.”

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Canada’s Atlantic provinces have kept COVID-19 largely at bay — here’s how

By: Saba Aziz

In a previous report by Global News, Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, said Nova Scotia was not “approaching their vaccination strategy with the same zeal as other jurisdictions.”

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They were sicker and more vulnerable. So why did long-term-care patients see fewer doctors during COVID’s first wave?

By: Kenyon Wallace

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing at Ryerson University and a contributor to the CIHI report, said many infections can be treated by doctors in long-term-care homes but patients may need to be transferred to hospital if conditions worsen.

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Ontario seniors stuck inside long-term care want to be let out

“We can probably estimate that across Ontario, there’s 40,000 individuals that we would see be homebound. People who for example getting a vaccine in their own home is a necessity, not a convenience,” said Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA.

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Pfizer to Move up Delivery of Vaccine Doses

Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, joined CTV Power Play to discuss the need to vaccinate older adults for COVID-19,

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Canada's nursing homes have worst record for COVID-19 deaths among wealthy nations: report

By: Julie Ireton

"It really tells us that there were things that we could have done to avoid a lot of the deaths that we saw in Canada and that countries, frankly, that were better prepared prior to the pandemic, that had better funded systems, they performed far better than Canada has," said Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research and co-chair at the National Institute on Ageing, a partner in the study with CIHI.

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Why does AstraZeneca vaccine guidance keep changing? Experts weigh in

By: Saba Aziz

“I don’t think that I would recommend anybody who’s already received a dose to not receive their second dose,” said Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA.

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New data shows COVID-19 pandemic now 'completely out of control' in Ontario, key scientific adviser says

By: Lauren Pelley

Toronto-based geriatrician Dr. Nathan Stall, a member of the science table, said Ontario is "repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again." "We continually fail to protect the most vulnerable," he continued. "First it was long-term care, now it's community-dwelling older adults [and] essential workers."

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At least 50 Ontario long-term-care homes have a COVID-19 outbreak. How many staff in the homes are vaccinated? The province has no reliable idea

By: Diana Zlomislic

In Peel, workplace information for vaccinated healthcare staff is missing roughly 60 per cent of the time, according to the region’s public health unit.

It means “critically important” information is going unrecorded, said Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the NIA. “It’s very much in the interests of families and residents to know whether the staff providing direct and hands-on care in indoor settings are vaccinated,” said Stall, who also sits on the province’s COVID-19 Science Table.

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B.C. opens way to social closeness at LTC homes while other provinces review isolation policies

By: Mike Hager

B.C.’s new rules are the most liberal in the country, according to Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at Ryerson University’s National Institute on Ageing. They go much further than other provinces by allowing residents unsupervised visits in the community – where they might mingle with those who have the virus – and then allowing them to return without isolating in their rooms for a set period, Dr. Sinha said. These outings have virtually been banned across the country, he said.

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What a Quebec nursing home changed to protect residents after 108 of them died last year

By: Tu Thanh Ha

Also appearing before the inquiry, Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, praised Quebec’s move to set up IPAC teams and train more orderlies.

“These are two concrete things that I believe could have been adequately done over the summer [in Ontario],” he testified. “And for everybody who says they couldn’t be, I just say, look at la belle province next door. And you can see they really addressed those two issues.”

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Families of B.C. care home residents, advocates celebrate eased visitation rules

B.C. introduced the rules in March 2020 to curb the deadly spread of COVID-19 in care homes. It eased some rules later in the year, including designating a single essential visitor for each resident. But B.C. families still endured the most restrictive visitation policies compared with long-term care homes anywhere else in the country, said the National Institute on Ageing at Ryerson University.

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Ontario reviewing 2nd dose timeline for COVID-19 vaccine

The assistant scientific director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table Dr. Nathan Stall suggested the province has the capability to pivot and rework the vaccine schedule for those who need a second dose sooner. “They are evaluating evidence as it arrives and they will make decisions based on that,” Stall said. “This is the nature of evidence in real time.”

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Research raises questions over delayed second vaccine doses for seniors

Dr. Samir Sinha said there's already enough evidence for NACI to revise its advice, suggesting some urgency as he pointed to statistics that find 96 per cent of COVID-19 linked deaths are people over the age of 60.

"As a geriatrician, I'm becoming increasingly uncomfortable about the strategy of delaying these doses for older people and in particular, older people living in congregate care settings, and those who are highly vulnerable," said Sinha.

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'It's very troubling': Just over half of Manitobans 80 or older received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine

"It's very troubling," said Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the NIA. Stall said people who are over the age of 80 are some of the highest risk of poor COVID-19 outcomes.

"We need to be acknowledging this problem, making sure that we are trying to address as many of these barriers and identify and find as many of these people as well," he said.

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Loved ones worried about low staff vaccination rates at nursing homes

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the NIA had told CBC's Ottawa Morning that Ontario's rate of vaccinations among nursing home staff is "embarrassingly low."

"I don't really want to blame anything on the staff here, because, frankly, Ontario's support for its staff and its long-term care and retirement homes hasn't honestly been terrific," said Sinha.

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COVID-19 vaccine: Second dose delay ‘more risky’ for seniors, experts warn

By: Saba Aziz

“Older people… have the weakest immune systems amongst us and COVID-19 preys on that,” said Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the NIA. “This ‘one size fits all’ approach to delaying the second dose of the vaccine by up to 16 weeks may not be right for everyone.”

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Why guidelines for what Canadians can and can't do after getting COVID-19 vaccines are still unclear

Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the NIA, says communication from public health officials on what people can do after getting a COVID-19 vaccine has been lacking — especially for older Canadians. "I've had patients who have showed up at the vaccination clinic expecting to get their second shot and have been turned away, so they are devastated emotionally, I've had people who have found out immediately beforehand," he said.

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Routine COVID-19 testing for LTC staff not useful, Ontario science table argues

By: Wendy Leung

“We know that overall, the yield of this testing has been quite low, and we know that there are several direct and indirect harms and opportunity costs of this testing,” said Toronto geriatrician Nathan Stall, a member of the science table who co-wrote the brief.

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