As the 6th wave hits Ontario, families must be allowed to visit those in long-term care: advocates

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Maria Mikelenas-Mcloughlin remembers watching her mother's well-being deteriorate in long-term care.

In the late 1990s, she saw her mom's twice-a-week baths reduced to a weekly sponge bath, says her mother was fed unidentifiable "mush" by staff and dealt with harassment from other residents. 

Those visits were an essential reprieve — one many seniors have been denied during the pandemic. 

While past treatment of seniors in long-term care raised some concerns, Mikelenas-Mcloughlin, 79, says, it's the future that now has her worried. Right now, the widow lives alone in Toronto, but with limited mobility, she knows that she'll eventually need help.

"The concern I have down the line is, will I be able to speak gently to the caregiver and say, 'Please turn me over softly?'"

Mikelenas-Mcloughlin, former president of the Etobicoke chapter of the Canadian Association of Retired People (CARP) is among the advocates calling on government, long-term care homes and health providers to ensure seniors don't face the same type isolation now as they did in previous waves of the pandemic.  

Their concerns are mounting as Ontario records an estimated 100,000 to 120,000 daily cases during this sixth wave of the virus. 

Throughout the pandemic, seniors were identified as among the most vulnerable to serious illness and became some of the first to get vaccinated. 

At the same time, some of those living in long-term care settings experienced neglect and lived in alarming conditions after certain provincial facilities became overrun by COVID-19, according to discoveries made by the Canadian Armed Forces and documented in a May 2020 report. 

Lisa Levin, the CEO of AdvantAge Ontario, a non-profit long-term care provider, says that some seniors in care have compared the pandemic to being in solitary confinement.

"What people didn't realize is that when seniors' homes were in outbreaks, not only were they not able to see their families, they couldn't even see the other residents in the homes," she said. "They were literally in their rooms and unable to get out."

Since the majority of residents and staff are vaccinated, Levin said she believes people can afford to lower their guard if they follow all the precautions.

"We no longer need to keep seniors isolated from their families," she said. "We have learned that doing that has been almost as devastating as COVID itself."

Still, she says, the virus remains a threat.