Merrilee Fullerton’s Past Health-Care Views Spur Questions Amid Pandemic
By: Emma Paling
The question over public versus private ownership is bubbling up because of how COVID-19 outbreaks have played out, Dr. Samir Sinha told HuffPost Canada. He’s the health policy research director of Ryerson University’s National Institute on Ageing.
Ottawa restaurant owner challenges mayor, premier to serve tables and experience patio weather
By: Jeremie Charron
"If you do proceed with reopening and outbreaks continue to rise in this setting, not only are you choosing to prioritize businesses over the lives of people living in long-term care homes but you’re going to have to keep the people who live in there in essential lockdown," said Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the National Institute on Ageing.
Why experts aren't declaring victory yet despite fewer COVID-19 deaths so far in Ontario's 2nd wave
"There's a definite trend towards improvement, but with a caveat," Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the National Institute on Ageing, told CBC News. "We haven't observed where that trend is going to end up."
How low testing on the weekend may be making it harder to control Ontario’s second wave
By: Kenyon Wallace and Ed Tubb
Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at The National Institute on Ageing in Toronto, says Ontario needs a “clear road map” for what the province is trying to accomplish with testing.
“We’ve swung from one way of the government being concerned that not enough people were going to get tested, to then opening the floodgates by saying anybody who wants a test for any reason can go get a test,” he said.
October 28, 2020 – CTV News Channel
Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at The National Institute on Ageing, joined CTV News Channel to discuss COVID-19 in Canada's long term care homes.
Woman who died of COVID-19 only separated from Parkview Place roommate by end tables between beds, son learns
By: Joanne Levasseur, Jill Coubrough ·
During the first wave of COVID-19, 31 per cent of Ontario long-term care resident deaths could have been averted if they were in single rooms, said Dr. Nathan Stall, a geriatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, who co-authored a study that concludes reducing crowding in care homes could reduce deaths. "When a case of COVID-19 gets into a care home … they're like tinderboxes and they spread very rapidly and with devastating consequences," said Stall in an interview with CBC News.
Grim milestone: Canada marks 10,000 COVID-19 deaths as country battles second wave
By: Kelly Grant
That 80 per cent figure cuts two ways: It shows that Canada failed to protect residents of long-term care in the first wave, but succeeded in minimizing deaths among everyone else.
A paper by the Toronto geriatricians and researchers Nathan Stall and Samir Sinha neatly captures this dichotomy. Their study looked at deaths among residents of long-term care in a dozen OECD countries, some of which rode out the first wave well (Germany, Denmark) and some of which didn’t (Spain, Italy.)
Pandemic highlights widespread societal ageism
By: Ben Waldman
Toronto-based, Winnipeg-born physician and geriatrician Dr. Nathan Stall, who is currently studying toward a PhD in clinical epidemiology.
"To label it as ‘unavoidable’ really is an attitude we refer to as therapeutic nihilism," he said. "If you start with the premise that nothing you do matters, it becomes easier to justify doing nothing." Stall’s study of care-home outbreaks in Ontario and Quebec during the pandemic’s first wave showed pre-pandemic conditions played a major role in how the virus spread: non-profit homes had smaller and less deadly outbreaks than for-profit ones, and matters such as sanitation and design standards — ventilation, efforts to reduce crowding — contributed significantly to resident safety.
Hospitals full as cases surge in province’s ‘hot spots’: These 3 charts show where Ontario is right now in the COVID-19 battle
By: Kenyon Wallace and Patty Winsa
“If you ask around the hospital, are we nervous? Absolutely, because right now our hospitals are 100 per cent full,” said Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the National Institute on Ageing in Toronto, adding the current numbers reflect the spread of the virus two weeks ago, namely Thanksgiving.
How to have a safe Halloween in the midst of COVID-19
By: Nicole Ireland
But Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Health and University Health Network in Toronto, said it's important to strike a balance. Halloween often brings a nice opportunity for older neighbours to interact with younger ones. "I think for a lot of older people, this can be a little bit of a socialization highlight of their year," he said.
Inspection at Parkview Place Highlights Issues
Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the National Institute on Ageing, speaks to CTV Winnipeg about a COVID-19 outbreak at Manitoba LTC homes.
CBC National - Ontario confronts 2nd wave with 1,000 new COVID-19 cases
Ontario tops 1,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time with outbreaks multiplying in long-term care homes and growing stress on hospitals, interview with Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the National Institute on Ageing.
Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the NIA, joins Global News The Morning Show to discuss how we've failed those living in long-term care.
She's 28, survived COVID-19, and is living in a long-term care home with 200+ violations
By: Lauren Pelley
According to Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, longstanding issues in the long-term care system go far beyond any individual home. "Before this pandemic, long-term care was really struggling in Ontario, in the sense that it's a really underfunded system," he said.
Parkview Place needs province to take over care: Manitoba NDP, experts
By: Brittany Greenslade
“The fact that we are seeing such a spectacular outbreak happen in downtown Winnipeg, in a home that we knew had a high likelihood of this happening, it concerns me,” Mount Sinai Director of Geriatrics Dr. Samir Sinha said.
Doug Ford’s government is making it almost impossible to sue long-term-care homes. Good thing he’s ‘protecting’ COVID victims’ families
By: Bruce Arthur
“Ontario took a week or maybe a month to implement things,” says Sinha. “So if you ask long-term-care homes who’s to blame here, they’re going to tell you it was the government, because the government just wasn’t there to help them. So people could easily point to the government and say that it was the government’s inaction that actually led to this legislation. We can say the homes were acting in good faith, or doing what they could under the circumstances, but it was almost the blind leading the blind.
COVID-19 is changing the way we think about aging and long-term care
According to Canada's National Institute for Aging (NIA), long-term care homes aren't the only ones with altered perspectives on aging because of COVID-19. In a survey conducted in July, the institute found that about 60 per cent of Canadians, and almost 70 per cent of Canadians 65 years and older, reported that COVID-19 has changed their opinion on whether or not they'd arrange for themselves or an older loved one to live in a nursing or retirement home.
COVID-19 had a devastating effect on the quality of life of nursing home residents. We may never know how much because some homes hit pause on assessing it
By: Moira Welsh
Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the National Institute on Ageing, said CIHI’s long-term data is considered high quality. Both analyze it for major research projects. Sinha said the indicators “tell you how this resident is doing and how can we better plan their care. But if you don’t actually do that assessment, you are almost flying blind.”
Protecting seniors in Manitoba personal care homes
Geriatrics medicine specialist Dr. Nathan Stall explains how care home outbreaks can be prevented or controlled.
Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at The National Institute on Ageing , joined CTV National News to discuss the particular vulnerability of LTC residents across Canada as we continue to experience unprecedented levels of community transmission of COVID-19 + hundreds of LTC outbreaks.
