Canadian nursing home controversy raises issue of more freedom for vaccinated residents

In Canada, residents of once-ravaged nursing homes are vaccinated but still isolated. The governor of Alaska, Mike Dunleavy, announced that all residents or workers age 16 and older would be given a coronavirus vaccine. The state has the highest inoculation rate in the U.S. nytimes

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Long-term care homes, as they are called in Canada, were prioritized for the first precious doses of vaccines, to few objections — they were ground zero for the pandemic’s cruel ravage. Around 66 percent of the country’s terminal Covid-19 victims lived in nursing homes, among the highest rates in the world.

But while the vaccines have given the majority of nursing-home residents protection from death by the virus, so far they have not offered more life. Some residents have compared their lives to those of prisoners and caged animals.

Most places around the country have policies that allow visits from only one or two designated caregivers, but these measures aren’t evenly carried out. And in several cities, including Toronto and Montreal, residents are not allowed to leave the property to walk to a pharmacy or enjoy the simple pleasure of a stroll down the street.

All this has left some residents frustrated, baffled and wondering: What, exactly, am I being kept alive for? ...

Officials at provincial and territorial health care ministries around the country, which oversee health care, offer many reasons for not relaxing restrictions: concerns about emerging variants of the virus, the lack of research on the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing transmission and, in some cases, the high infection rates in the surrounding community....

In the United States, some states have loosened restrictions as cases have dropped, allowing nursing homes to hold group activities like game night or choir practice. And some homes are permitting indoor visits under U.S. federal guidelines put in place in September that allow them if a home has been virus-free for 14 days, and county positivity rates are below 10 percent, regardless of the home’s vaccination rate.

But elsewhere, homes are about to reach a full year of being closed to visitors, despite the plummeting of coronavirus cases.

AARP and other advocacy organizations have called on the U.S. government to ease visitation guidelines as vaccines are rolled out in nursing homes. Many note that with vaccinations, the likelihood of residents contracting and dying from Covid-19 is lower, but the harm to residents from social isolation continues unabated....

The question of how to care for the country’s senior population during a pandemic isn’t unique to Canada and the United States. Many nursing homes around the world banned visits as the coronavirus arrived around a year ago. Soon after, geriatricians sounded the alarm about the rapid decline in health and well-being of residents, triggering a debate about the balance between protection and quality of life, as well as the rights and autonomy of residents. As a result, many jurisdictions reintroduced some sort of visitor policy, as the first wave subsided. ...