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Ontario didn’t replenish PPE stockpiles before COVID-19, long-term care commission says
COVID-19 on Ontario’s long-term care system has heard the province did not replenish its stockpiles of personal protective equipment in the years leading up to the pandemic.Ontario’s former deputy minister of health and long-term care, Bob Bell, told the independent commission last month that the province’s supply of personal protective equipment should have been refilled around 2017 or 2018.Bell, who now chairs an advisory panel for the Revera chain of nursing homes, said there was no conscious decision to let the stockpiles dwindle, but the issue simply fell through the cracks at the time and in the years that followed. All long-term care residents, staff in Toronto, Peel, York, Windsor-Essex to be vaccinated by Jan.