Dire scenario for Ontario ICU beds, study says
‘CONSERVATIVE’
A study by Toronto epidemiologists suggests that Canada’s largest province could run out of intensive care beds and ventilators by late April, even assuming a sharp drop in the current coronavirus infection rate.
Researchers from the University of Toronto, University Health Network and Sunnybrook Hospital have released a model showing Ontario could run short of machines and space to ventilate very sick patients in just over five weeks.
“Because people who have this disease stay in the ICU a long time and lock up a ventilator bed, that means it doesn’t take a very big epidemic to completely log jam our health-care system as it stands,” said David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
“We don’t have enough ventilators. We can’t have enough ... That’s why we have to stop this virus in the community.”
In work led by Beate Sander, the Canada research chair in economics of infectious diseases, even a “conservative scenario” assuming a lower rate of infection than is currently occurring would lead to serious shortages.
That scenario assumes the average daily rate of infections over the 37 days would be 7.5 per cent, the rate Japan has experienced, compared with the 26 per cent daily rate that has been experienced recently.
It also assumes that hospitals would succeed in holding 25 per cent of the province’s 2,053 existing intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients, though most experts say typically 85 to 90 per cent of the beds are occupied by patients with other illnesses.
A more optimistic model predicts that if the province manages to increase capacity for COVID-19 patients by adding more than 2,000 beds and 600 ventilators, the system could hold up for 60 days, but there “may still be a critical shortage of ventilators.”
That would assume the province manages by then to keep about three-quarters of its intensive care beds free for COVID-19 patients.
The study assumes the average stay in the intensive care unit would be eight days.
The models haven’t yet included factors with a potential to slow the virus’s spread, such as the impact of the recent border restrictions or the closure of schools.
Over the past week, some provincial health ministers have been announcing plans to purchase ventilators while others have said supplies are adequate.
Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott told reporters on Wednesday, “We certainly have an adequate supply for what we’re dealing with right now.”
She then noted the province had ordered 300 more ventilators that it expected to receive shortly and said automobile parts manufacturers are looking to retool so they can produce some ventilators in Ontario.
The Canadian Press