A think tank collecting data on COVID-19 in Canadian long-term care homes says it has to stop its work because provinces are no longer releasing enough information about the spread of the virus in the sector.
The project, led by the National Institute on Aging, based at Metropolitan Toronto University, launched in April 2020 and presents information on cases, outbreaks and deaths in long-term care homes in map form, with a summary for each province and territory.
He has provided data to organizations including the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and has contributed to national and international research on COVID-19 in a sector that has seen a large proportion of Canadian deaths due to the virus.
But provinces have been sharing less data on outbreaks and cases since the start of this year, and the information is being made public much less frequently than in the past. The situation has reached a point where it is too difficult to keep the think tank’s project alive, said Dr. Sameer Sinha, director of health policy research at the institute.
“It’s not that we don’t want to continue to do that, and that we wouldn’t voluntarily be interested in doing that,” Sinha said in an interview.
“It is simply impossible to continue to perform this task in an accurate and reliable manner.”
The website for the Long-Term Care Tracking Project for COVID-19 will remain available online with data collected since July 1, but work to update it is on pause.
The sector is still under pandemic pressure
The long-term care sector is still feeling the effects of COVID-19.
New outbreaks are rapidly increasing in Ontario as the province grapples with a seventh wave of infections — more than doubling week-over-week in early July.
Without enough data, however, it is difficult to understand what is happening with COVID-19 in long-term care and how best to respond or plan for future outbreaks, Sinha said.
The National Institute on Aging wants to see the provinces and territories reach a common agreement on a consistent way to collect and publicly report data on long-term care and COVID-19, he said.
The think tank would also like the provinces, territories and federal government to choose an independent body to be responsible for reporting the data.
Sinha proposed giving the Canadian Institute for Health Information a mandate to collect information on COVID-19 in long-term care — something he said he was surprised to learn was not already in place when CIHI representatives contacted him at – early in the pandemic with an interest in the work of his data collection team.
Political considerations prevail: researcher
Lack of access to public data on outbreaks, cases and deaths makes it difficult to assess what is happening in the sector and makes governments less responsive to public pressure, Sinha argued.
“I think politically it’s become more convenient to just not report information rather than keep reminding people that we still have systemic and ongoing problems protecting our long-term care facilities and their residents,” he said.
Governments may be tracking data somewhere, but it’s unclear whether the information is being looked at to inform policy responses, Sinha said, adding that it’s difficult to gather information retrospectively if records aren’t kept in the moment.
“The problem is you can’t go back,” Sinha said.
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