VANCOUVER -- A Port Moody, B.C., woman is trying desperately to get her elderly mom out of the nursing home that she was transferred into only last week.

The reason?

She says a lack of communication has meant her 90-year-old mother is now isolated and her family shut-out.

“She is sad, crying. I haven’t seen her look worse,” Sue Dupuis said in an interview with CTV News.

Dupuis says her mom, Joan Caldwell, had been living with her until a broken leg landed the senior in Eagle Ridge Hospital.

Dupuis says she spent hours there each day for about a month, helping her mom with everything from physiotherapy to feeding.

“My job as her essential visitor was to help her with cognitive issues, communication,” added Dupuis.

But she says the hospital needed her mom’s bed and she was suddenly transferred to long-term care.

“I did not get to say goodbye to her. She was whisked out of the hospital, put in a transport vehicle and locked into that facility,” said Dupuis.

She says if someone had explained that her mom would be kept away from family and quarantined at Eagle Ridge Manor, she would have never agreed to the move.

What’s more, she says her mom has already received two shots of the Pfizer vaccine and recently tested negative for COVID-19.

For almost a year, families have faced severe restrictions in visiting those in long-term care. Most long-term care residents in B.C. have now received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine.

Health Minister Adrian Dix says he expects that before the end of March, there will be “changes to give more access to families, to their loved ones in long-term care.”

But long-term care researcher Vivian Stramatopoulos, who has just finished her first wave of research on essential caregivers, says B.C. should have loosened restrictions in long-term care months ago.

“The trauma incurred to these family members by being locked out so long is tantamount to a form of post-traumatic stress. There has been evidence you can safely integrate families for months,” she explained.

She says in Ontario, indoor visits have been permitted since September with proper PPE and screening.

“There were no cases documented of any family bringing in the virus,” Stramatopoulos said.

“It has made zero sense to me why B.C. has been so overly draconian with respect to locking out family,” she said in an interview from Toronto.

“We can do this safely. The evidence is there. I have no idea why B.C. has been so stagnant on this.”

Meanwhile, Dupuis says she is working with Fraser Health to bring her mom back home.

CTV News reached out to Fraser Health for comment but did not hear back by deadline.