Coroner says Quebec Health Department chose to ignore COVID-19 risk in long-term care – GLOBAL

May 16, 2022

Quebec’s decision to focus on protecting hospitals, coupled with the chronic dysfunction in the long-term care system, contributed to many long-term care deaths at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the province’s coroner said Monday.

Health Department officials were aware that older people were among the most vulnerable to COVID-19, yet officials failed to give specific instructions to long-term care centres, Géhane Kamel said in her new report.

“This indicates that even though we were aware, we nevertheless chose to keep seniors, specifically people living in (long-term care centres), in a pandemic planning blind spot,” Kamel said.

Her inquest looked at 53 deaths in long-term care during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, including 47 at the Herron, a private Montreal-area care home. She said Quebec’s early pandemic response suffered from a lack of co-ordination and from a Health Department that was over-centralized.

Read more: https://globalnews.ca/news/8839045/quebec-coroners-report-covid-19-long-term-care-deaths/