Home Alone (Long-term Care Edition)

May 21, 2020 -- Happy Thursday, and welcome back to another edition of the Daily CurveFlattener. It's Kylie Rebernik here in Oakville, Ont., and as usual, I have the ever-watchful Snowy (pictured below) monitoring my keystrokes, with a vigilant expression and a trained eye for pouncing on typos. Regular DCF readers are familiar with Snowy, but the logic of the media business is that a pretty face will always sell newspapers -- or e-newsletters, in this case.

As the weather gets warmer and stay-at-home restrictions ease, Ontario has seen a spike in the number of new confirmed Covid-19 cases. New data released, showed that after experiencing a dip over the weekend (May 15-16, 2020) of 304 confirmed new cases, as of Monday, May 25, 2020, Ontario is back up over the 400 number with 427 newly confirmed cases. 

Although it can be said that the curve is flattening, it is fairly obvious that long-term care facilities have been hit pretty hard, exposing the current gaps in care. On Tuesday, a resident of a Hamilton, Ont. retirement home who had tested positive for Covid-19 was accidentally left behind as staff transferred other residents of the home to the hospital: this after 49 residents tested positive for Covid-19. It was the resident who was left behind who contacted the staff of the retirement home to let them know he was still at the home. 

COVID CHRONICLE 05/21/2020

• Russia is now only second to the U.S. for the most number of confirmed Covid-19 cases. According to a new report in the British Medical Journal  (May 14, 2020), Russia has now reported 10,000 new cases for 10 consecutive days. 
• The Associated Press has reported that public health officials in various states are being accused of "fudging" the numbers to deliberately make Covid-19 numbers look better than they truly are.
• The Ford government has officially confirmed that students in Ontario will not be returning to school for the remainder of the school year. This also applies to private schools, licensed child care centres and preschools. 

STORIES CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY

Following the successful NPC Spring 2020 Webinar held yesterday, Editorial Director, Allan Ryan, and Senior Editor, John Evans, will be compiling a special report for the upcoming issue of The Chronicle of Healthcare Marketing. 

RIGHT NOW WE ARE LISTENING TO...

Hozier's rendition of the Parting Glass. I've listened to a lot of covers of this song and Hozier's version is perhaps my favourite. 

LATER WE ARE WATCHING...

Castle. Amazon Prime Video (behind a paywall) has recently added seven seasons of the crime-comedy-drama TV show. I find it makes a great background show to have on when I am knitting. 

TONIGHT WE ARE COOKING...

It's Taco Thursday. I am not sure if that is a thing, but it is today in my house. On the menu tonight is some Southwest-inspired tacos. Coronas will be served: the beer, that is. 

THE WEEK AHEAD
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That's it. Stay in touch, stay safe. Chronicle's Cory Perla will pick things up tomorrow.