Jul 28, 2022
By Jane Brown
A project compiling information about COVID-19 in Canadian long-term care homes is being paused because provinces and territories are not making enough data publicly available.
The Long-Term Care COVID-19 Tracker Project has been run by staff at the National Institute on Ageing at Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson University, since the spring of 2020.
It has provided information about the virus in nursing homes to federal agencies and other research projects.
It was during the spring and summer of 2020 during the first two waves of COVID, more than 3700 nursing home residents in Ontario died after contracting COVID-19.
But Dr. Samir Sinha, a geriatric specialist and research director on the project, says there’s not enough public information to keep updating the database.
The project that includes a Canada-wide map and regional breakdown detailing COVID-19 cases, outbreaks, and deaths in long-term care will remain online with information up to the beginning of July, but for now will not be updated.
Dr. Sinha is calling for an independent body to be given a mandate to collect and present the data.
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