![\"Fifty](\"https:\/\/img.huffingtonpost.com\/asset\/5fdbb88e1e00005a0076ee22.jpeg?ops=scalefit_630_noupscale\")
<\/p>\n(December 17, 2020)<\/p>\n
By: Sherina Harris, HuffPost<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fifty crosses have appeared on the side lawn of the Camilla Care Community nursing home in Mississauga, Ont. on May 10, 2020.<\/p>\n
The Ontario Ministry of Long-Term Care acted \u201cperilously late\u201d and \u201cunderused\u201d its powers to mandate takeovers of\u00a0long-term care<\/a>\u00a0homes during the pandemic, according to a\u00a0new report<\/a>.<\/p>\n As of Dec. 3, the ministry had issued at least six mandatory management orders and 14 voluntary contracts to homes that needed more support managing a\u00a0COVID-19<\/a>\u00a0outbreak.<\/p>\n A voluntary agreement \u2014 where a home makes a contract with a hospital \u2014 allows for the hospital to provide additional support, though at the control of the facility\u2019s potentially negligent management, Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) said at a Thursday press conference.<\/p>\n Management orders, meanwhile, are issued when a home\u2019s management is \u201cdeemed incompetent\u201d and a hospital takes over. Mehra said the support provided through these orders varies, but typically it means hospital staff take over management functions at the home, and help with infection control and staffing.<\/p>\n But many homes experiencing bad\u00a0COVID-19 outbreaks\u00a0have not received management orders \u2014 and other interventions have come \u201cinexplicably late,\u201d only after high infection rates and death tolls, the OHC said in its report.<\/p>\n Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, at Queens Park in Toronto January 21, 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s just massive scores of homes with large outbreaks with no interventions at all,\u201d Mehra said.<\/p>\n She said although some hospitals continue to support long-term care homes, they face\u00a0capacity issues<\/a>\u00a0that prevent them from helping in the same way they did during the first wave.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is they don\u2019t have the capacity to do that, and there was no plan in the summer made to build that capacity,\u201d Mehra said.<\/p>\n The province should have brought back retired nurses and done massive recruitment for teams that could support homes, she added.<\/p>\n More than 2,500 long-term care residents have died of COVID-19 during the pandemic, according to provincial data. And the numbers are growing through the second wave. By the OHC\u2019s count, 18 residents have died in the last 24 hours and there have been 115 new COVID-19 infections in the last day in long-term care homes across the province.<\/p>\n Many of Ontario\u2019s long-term care homes\u00a0have \u201ccrumbling\u201d staffing levels<\/a>\u00a0that are worse than in the spring when the pandemic first took hold, and there are also \u201ccritical\u201d problems in cohorting residents, Mehra said. Staff at more than a dozen homes say they are short on personal protective equipment (PPE), such as gowns, gloves, disinfecting wipes and N95 masks, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Natalie](\"https:\/\/img.huffingtonpost.com\/asset\/5fdbb3e52700005800685f3b.jpeg?ops=scalefit_630_noupscale\")
<\/p>\n![\"Military](\"https:\/\/img.huffingtonpost.com\/asset\/5fdbb1e02b00004e00c36f20.jpeg?cache=o08Pm2GfV3&ops=scalefit_630_noupscale\")
<\/span><\/p>\nRICHARD LAUTENS VIA GETTY IMAGES <\/span><\/div>\nMilitary personnel are seen changing shifts behind the Eatonville Care Centre in Toronto on May 26, 2020.<\/div>\n\n\n