COVID-19 in Quebec’s long-term care homes: families worry as cases, deaths rise

Quebec families with loved ones living in the province’s long term-care facilities are sharing their worry as COVID-19 cases rise in CHSLDs.

That’s the new reality for Tamara and Ana-Maria Fonseca.

Just a few weeks ago, the sisters packed up their father Daniel’s belongings and moved him into a CHSLD. While they are thankful for the care he’s receiving, they worry he’ll be infected with COVID-19 again.

The latest COVID data from April 24 showed more than 1,700 active cases in the province’s CHSLDs.

“If he got COVID again, that would just end his life unfortunately,” said Tamara.

“The doctor told us that,” added Ana-Maria.

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, Daniel Fonseca arrived in Montreal in the early 1990s. He was a baker all his life.

In the last year, he suffered two strokes, and got COVID-19 during his three months in hospital.

Daniel Fonseca in a hospital bed. (Credit: Tamara Fonseca/handout)

That led to the difficult decision to transfer him to Montreal’s CHSLD de La Petite-Patrie.

“You know what broke my heart?” said Tamara. “And I know I’m going to be a little sentimental, but when I was leaving his apartment and I was seeing his belongings, that let’s say he didn’t need any more, on the street, and then just driving off with my car, that was it.”

The fear is that their father will contract COVID-19 once again – and that the damage could be fatal.

“It’s a big scare,” said Tamara. “And we’re always like, ‘is he OK? Is he sneezing? He’s coughing? Is he breathing?’

“We worry a lot about COVID.”

Exterior of CHSLD de La Petite-Patrie in 2022. (Credit: CityNews/Matt Tornabene)

More than 4,000 seniors lost their lives in public residences during the first wave of the pandemic in Quebec.

And though numbers of infections and hospitalizations are increasing in the sixth wave, Dr. Sophie Zhang – who oversees long-term care homes – says so far it’s not spreading as fast as it was during Montreal’s fifth wave.

“The death rate in the first wave was very, very, very high – up to 40 per cent and across the province,” said Zhang, the co-president of the community of practice for physicians in CHSLDs. “And every successive wave has seen lower and lower death rates. And for example, the fifth wave in the territory where I work, we have 17 CHSLDs in the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud, and we saw that the death rate was about 4.4 per cent in the fifth wave compared to 40 per cent in the first wave.

“So we do see a decrease with every successive wave.”

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Even though Quebec’s older population has the highest vaccinated rate, they are still naturally more at risk, says an infectious disease specialist.

“We’ve done a reasonably good job of vaccinating that group,” said Dr. Matthew Oughton of the Jewish General Hospital. “If you break it down by age and look across the province, it’s really the older segments of the population that have had their have the higher proportions of third doses and now even a very small proportion of fourth doses. So we are doing what we can.

“But they still have those fundamental risk factors of age and other co-morbidities against them facing this increasingly transmissible virus that is more and more able to take advantage of any niches, any opportunities.”

Zhang says they are seeing promising signs that the death rates in CHSLDs due to COVID-19 are lower than previously, but she still calls for vigilance.

That’s something the Fonseca sisters are happy to do, as they spend every moment they can with their father in his new home.

“It’s not an easy situation, but at least they’re very kind people, good people,” said Ana-Maria. “For him, for all the others. And that person’s here. They give them hope. So we’re going to stick to that.”