Quebec coroner's office orders public inquiry into COVID-19 deaths in long-term care homes
Most Quebecers who have died in the pandemic have been seniors in care.
Quebec's chief coroner has ordered a wide-ranging public inquiry into deaths that have occurred in the province's long-term care homes, private seniors' residences and other residential institutions for vulnerable people over the first six weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 60 per cent of the province's COVID-19 deaths have occurred in public or private long-term care homes, known by their French initials as CHSLDs, many of which were plagued by chronic staffing shortages long before the pandemic hit.
The coroner's office has already begun investigating one privately run long-term care home that had a high number of COVID-19 deaths — the CHSLD Herron in Dorval, in Montreal's West Island.