B.C. families to reunite after months of long term care restrictions

As of Friday, the long-awaited reunion of many B.C. families with their loved ones in long term care will be underway.

After Christmas, the province introduced new measures on high-risk settings as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was spreading rapidly in the province and hospitalizations spiked. While the rules on nightclubs, hockey games, and more were lifted last month, long term care visits remained limited to only one designated family member.

Many families have questioned that move and pointed out the high vaccination rates among long term care residents.

BC Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie is among those who don’t agree that the measures were appropriate to the threat.

“I think Omicron was exploding. I mean, we were seeing hospitalization rates that we had never seen before. And we were seeing our testing capacity strained like we’ve never seen it before. And I think you know, there’s this reflexive default, ‘We have to protect the people in long term care.’ I don’t think that what we did on December 31 was the best approach,” she said.

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“If the person is fully vaccinated, and they’ve just had a rapid test where they’re negative and the person they’re visiting is fully vaccinated, then you have lowered the probability of a transmission of the virus significantly to almost but not completely zero,” she pointed out.

Mackenzie says going forward, its important that we listen to seniors on what their comfort levels are.

“If persons living in long term care doesn’t want to take that even that small risk, they don’t have to…we forgot that. We took away from people the right to decide what risk they wanted to take, right? And so if you were a senior living in your own home and you were 95 you could decide whether you wanted to venture out to grocery store or get your groceries delivered…this was a bit frustrating that the seniors in the community couldn’t get the rapid tests,” she said, adding that she hopes the province continues to stay on track with handing out rapid tests to all seniors, even those who don’t live in long term care.

However, while all the grandkids can now visit, everyone 12 and older must be vaccinated, and rapid tests will be done at the door.

“I think that over time, these things will ebb and flow. So, I think we can I don’t think the vaccine passport requirement will necessarily drop, but the rapid testing may drop as there are fewer cases in the community, we then may see the need to reintroduce it,” Mackenzie said.

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Masks must still be worn in most areas except when visiting in the rooms.

While many families will be keen to visit, Mackenzie says it’s important to know seniors have been the overwhelming majority of deaths from the virus and remain the most at-risk group.

“Even with vaccinations, the probability has changed but the basic proportionality has not changed. So, I think what that has meant is we continue to see deaths in long term care. Overall, about a third of the total deaths from COVID have been in long term care. Notwithstanding that only less than one per cent of the population lives in long term care,” she said.