When a bombshell report from the Canadian Armed Forces outlining a litany of problems at five long-term care homes released on Tuesday, family members say they're not surprised.
Simon Nisbet is convinced that if he hadn't moved his mother out of her long-term care home, she would never have left alive.
After she was officially diagnosed with the novel coronavirus herself, Nisbet said he could tell from the look in her eyes that she was deteriorating quickly and needed to be transferred to a local hospital for better care. "I had no choice but to get her out of there," he said in a telephone interview. "If I trusted what they were telling me, she'd be gone."
Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford decried the report's "disturbing" and "horrific" findings, with Ford pledging to fix the long-term care system across the province. As the virus swept through the home, infecting residents and staff alike, she said her husband's requests to be moved from his bed into his wheelchair often went unheeded and he frequently went without meals or fluids.
Similar fears haunt Audrey DaCruz, who said her mother spent just eight weeks in an east-Toronto-area long-term care home before dying of COVID-19. In a chat hosted by Ontario's opposition party leader, DaCruz alleged her mother contracted the virus from her two roommates who were not isolated even after testing positive for the disease. The facility was not included in the armed forces' report.
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