Exclusive | Investigation: 192 died in Vancouver care homes that delayed declaring coronavirus outbreaks
- Post investigation finds virus infected more than 1,000 people at 42 homes where outbreak status was deliberately not declared when ‘low risk’ staff fell ill
- Health authorities tried to withhold data about failures of the ‘enhanced surveillance’ strategy, with many homes letting visits and group activities continue
At least 192 Vancouver care home residents died of Covid-19, and more than 1,000 people were infected, at facilities that deliberately did not declare outbreaks when a “low risk” worker first contracted the virus, a South China Morning Post investigation has found.
Vancouver’s two health authorities, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) and Fraser Health, both tried to withhold data about the apparent failures of the strategy known as “enhanced surveillance” or “enhanced monitoring”, until they were compelled to provide it by Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
The FOI data show that at least 42 Vancouver care homes failed to stop the virus spreading after they instituted this new strategy – instead of declaring outbreaks when just one worker had tested positive. They were acting on the advice of the authorities’ medical health officers, who enacted the strategy on November 9 in an effort to preserve staffing resources and social interactions for residents.
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192 died in Vancouver care homes under policy that delayed Covid-19 outbreak declarations
Initial staff infections – which were deemed not to risk transmission at the facilities – were not to be made public, and could also be kept secret from residents, families and even fellow workers under VCH’s version of the protocols, policy documents show, with visits and group activities allowed to continue.
On average, it took almost five days before facilities across both health authorities realised that the disease had in fact spread beyond their first infected worker and they belatedly imposed outbreak lockdowns.
The worst failure under the policy occurred at East Vancouver’s Little Mountain Place care home, where 41 people died in British Columbia’s deadliest outbreak.
That outbreak began to unfold just 11 days after the new provincewide protocols were introduced.