Where did things go wrong? B.C. advocate's report looks at 800 COVID-19 deaths in long-term care

A just-published report from the Office of the Seniors Advocate of British Columbia outlines what happened in the province's long-term care system in the first year of the pandemic.

The deaths of more than 800 residents of long-term care and assisted living facilities in B.C. have been attributed to COVID-19.

The disease took hold in the province in 2020, when relatively little was known about how it spread.

Over the following weeks and months, more was understood about COVID-19 and the novel coronavirus. It quickly became clear that outbreaks in health-care facilities were capable of claiming many lives.

Policies were developed and changed as information spread. Testing became more common, and vaccines were made available to the province's most vulnerable first.

But for many, these updates came too late. And there's still more to be done to prevent further deaths of COVID-19.

A just-published report from the Office of the Seniors Advocate of British Columbia outlines what happened in the province's long-term care system in the first year of the pandemic. Specifically, seniors advocate Isobel Mackenzie looked into the contributing factors behind outbreaks between March 2020 and February 2021.

Mackenzie's office looked at more than 100,000 records when completing its investigation, and 365 outbreaks at 210 sites.