The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on people who use and provide long-term care (LTC) globally. A new International Living Report on COVID-19 and Long-Term Care shows that long-standing structural problems meant most countries were poorly prepared to respond to a pandemic in the LTC sector.
The report allows users to compare the long-term care systems of different countries; their responses to Covid-19; and their plans for recovery and future reforms aimed at ensuring care systems are better prepared for future emergencies.
The report is formed of 64 questions that can be answered at national or regional/sub-national level and is organised in four parts:
- Key characteristics of Long-Term Care systems and preparedness, pre-pandemic
- Impacts of the COVID-19 on people who use and provide Long-Term Care
- Measures adopted to minimise the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people who use and provide LTC
- Reforms and actions to address structural weaknesses of LTC systems and improve preparedness for future emergencies
The report identifies that, in most countries, a failure to properly consider people who rely on care in emergency planning led to delays and difficulties in implementing measures to prevent infections and deaths. Many systems struggled in balancing infection control with the human rights and physical and mental wellbeing of people who use and provide care.
When the pandemic started it also became clear that, while we have well established international platforms to share information about health care systems, there is no similar international infrastructure to share learning in long-term care. LTCcovid has brought together experts from over 40 countries who are contributing their own time and expertise to fill in this gap.
This International Living Report on COVID-19 and Long-Term Care is a dynamic, wiki-style, tool to ensure that we can continue to learn from the experiences of other countries in relation to the pandemic and to support efforts to strengthen long-term care systems.
The report is compiled collaboratively by researchers on Long-Term Care. Experts on long-term care can sign up and contribute by answering a list of questions on their countries and areas of expertise and updating them as new information and research become available. The report can be read by topic or, for countries where enough questions have been answered, through country profile pages.
This builds on previous LTCcovid country reports and on a project to support “Social Care COVID Recovery and Resilience in England” funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and is a collaboration between LSE’s Care Policy and Evaluation Centre’s (CPEC) and the Nuffield Trust.
If you would like to contribute to the report, please email a.comas@lse.a.uk