Thank you.
It's certainly not lost on me that today marks the first day of National Nursing Week. I want to take this moment to thank all the incredible frontline nurses and health care workers across the country. I know that SEIU has a pretty significant nursing division and represents 60,000 workers.
I am also struck by the fact that we are almost a year to the day from some really poignant testimony that Ms. Stewart provided to this committee at the outset of this pandemic. I wish we could have been here under better news. I can recall the interview I conducted with the secretary-treasurer, Tyler Downey, when he first announced the loss of Christine Mandegarian, and of course all the pain and anguish that all the health care workers are experiencing across the country in terms of the absolutely disproportionate loss. I want to state that right now. It's estimated that 80% of all the deaths due to COVID-19, 25,000 deaths, are connected to long-term care facilities.
I was struck by the opening remarks of Ms. Stewart, when she named the members who have been lost from her local. I want to take a moment away from some of the administrative questions that have been asked and I want to give Ms. Stewart an opportunity, on this first day of nursing week, to honour those workers we have lost and perhaps share a bit more with the committee. I feel that in the order of magnitude of the loss, sometimes the individual stories are lost to us.
If Ms. Stewart agrees, perhaps she could share a little more detail about the people who died just because they went to work.