Family whose mother died at city-run nursing home in Toronto begged for physical distancing measures weeks before outbreak
When Greg McVeigh and his brother, Rod, couldn’t get through to Toronto’s Seven Oaks, the nursing home where their parents lived, they started reaching out blindly through e-mail and Instagram to anyone who might be able to help protect the couple from the coronavirus.
In phone calls and e-mails, including one to Toronto Mayor John Tory on March 20, the brothers begged the city-owned facility to test more residents and to isolate their mother before the outbreak reached her floor. But Seven Oaks, following the advice of provincial public health officials, initially did neither.
On April 7, their mother, Joan McVeigh, died of COVID-19, making her one of at least 22 residents who have died in one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks at a long-term care home in Canada.
Nearly half of Canada’s 900 coronavirus fatalities have been of residents of nursing or retirement complexes
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