Coroner says Quebec Health Department chose to ignore COVID-19 risk in long-term care

The Health Department offered no specific instructions to long-term care homes despite knowing older people were particularly at-risk from the novel coronavirus, the report finds.

A long-awaited report from the Quebec coroner says residents of long-term care homes were kept in a blind spot while the provincial government reacted to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Géhane Kamel, who investigated deaths in long-term care during the early days of the pandemic, concludes that the Health Department offered no specific instructions to long-term care homes despite knowing older people were particularly at-risk from the novel coronavirus.

Kamel’s inquest looked at 53 deaths in long-term care, including 47 at the Herron, a private residence in the Montreal area.

Her report released Monday recommends that the province’s college of physicians review the decision by doctors who treated patients at three long-term care centres — including the Herron — to offer remote consultations in the spring of 2020 while people were dying.

She is also recommending that Quebec’s public health director be given more independence, writing that then-director, Dr. Horacio Arruda, may have had difficulty taking decisions because he was also a deputy minister.

Kamel says Quebec’s early pandemic response suffered from a lack of coordination and a clear chain of command.