Via CBC News: 'It was mayhem'. Excerpt from a long report:
It had been a harrowing Sunday.
One day after British Columbia's provincial health officer announced an outbreak of COVID-19 at North Vancouver's Lynn Valley Care Centre, the children of the long-term care home's aging residents descended on the facility.
Deanna Harlow recalls a chaotic scene. Her sister told her there were only two people working on her 96-year-old father's floor. Some aides were in isolation, at home with suspected cases of the novel coronavirus. And replacements were scared to come to the facility.
Residents were isolated in their rooms. Harlow estimates there must be about 45 units on the floor, each housing a patient. Many had complex problems. Catheters. Colostomy bags. Nearly all were wearing adult diapers.
A nurse arrived, meaning that three employees were now tending to a floor that would normally require at least twice that many workers, Harlow said.
The families pitched in to deliver meals and tend to patient needs.
"Several patients, they were bedridden with a wet, wet diaper and calling out incessantly for help," said Harlow. "It was just — it was mayhem."
Another woman who was at the facility says a clutch of daughters gathered together at the end of a heart-rending day.
"We were all in there together," she said. "And one of the women said, 'We need to let people know about this, because it's already too late for this care home.'"
A little more than two weeks later, that dire prediction appears to be largely accurate.
The death toll at the Lynn Valley Care Centre remains a moving target after it recorded Canada's first COVID-19 death on March 8. Ten more residents have since passed. And more than 40 additional patients have tested positive for the virus, along with 21 staff members.
