The NIA Long-Term Care COVID-19 Tracker Open Data Working Group collects information on confirmed and presumptive positive, resident and staff cases and deaths related to COVID-19 in long-term care settings across Canada. We are doing this to particularly help front-line hospitals, long-term care providers, and residents and their families to collectively have a solid understanding of how COVID-19 is affecting both nursing and retirement homes across the country. This helps to ensure that accurate and timely information is easily accessible and may enable and strengthen further front-line activities that can benefit those living and working across these settings.
This publicly accessible COVID-19 tracking map, built in collaboration with Empower Health, compiles the best available data from multiple sources including: public health units; government reports; media; information publicly posted by these homes; and by what they share more directly with their residents, families, and staff. We cannot guarantee that all cases are laboratory confirmed. As a result, the numbers we report may be higher than those from other sources. The data are entered manually and had been updated daily on weekdays until July 20th, 2020. As of July 20th, 2020, data are now being updated twice per week owing to many jurisdictions now entering a first wave recovery phase. New data will be visible on the tracker on Tuesday and Friday mornings (unless a holiday falls on Monday, in which case it will be visible Wednesday and Friday mornings). Based on the timing of our data collection, our data reporting could also be subject to under-reporting at certain times as well.
Some information about long-term care and retirement homes include information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Ontario.
We present, on a Google Map of Canada, every nursing and retirement home that has experienced a COVID-19 outbreak. At the level of each institution the following is listed: name; type of institution; address; phone number; and the reported number of cases and deaths related to COVID-19 among staff, residents/patients, and overall. A time stamp will always indicate when the data for that institution was last updated. On the main page, there is also a date stamp indicating when data was last added onto the tracker.
In Ontario, all long-term care and retirement homes, as well as publicly funded hospitals, are listed. For specific homes and hospitals that are listed, they are symbolized with a pin. Pins featuring a ‘hospital’ symbol represent the location of publicly funded hospitals, however, our tracker is not providing data on the outbreak status in hospitals. Pins featuring a ‘house’ symbol represent both nursing and retirement homes. Pins featuring a ‘house’ symbol are further colour-coded to denote their COVID-19 history. All ‘black’ pins represent no known history of COVID-19 cases. All ‘red’ pins represent an ‘active outbreak’ situation of COVID-19 cases – with an outbreak being defined as one or more active resident/patient or staff cases. All ‘green’ pins represent a ‘resolved outbreak’ situation.
A combined national and provincial/territorial summary is presented in a chart containing the total counts of the number of resident and staff cases and deaths, number and percentage of homes affected, and the case fatality rates for each jurisdiction.
If you have any additional questions/comments, or find any errors, please do not hesitate to contact us.