While families remain on the outside, away from their loved ones who live in long-term care, the residents inside sit and wait, cut off from the world and with their routines drastically altered due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. “Now that it’s actually sunny out, you want to go outside, and that’s a hard one for me to handle,” explained Melanie Gaunt, a resident at Ivany Place, Northwood Continuing Care’s Bedford, N.S., campus. “I’d like to see my friends, too, obviously; I’d like to be able to give people a hug,” she said. “That’s probably right now the hardest thing for me.” Gaunt lives with multiple sclerosis and has called Ivany her home for about a decade.