May 19 set for reopening of suspended health services
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) has set a May 19 date to resume some of the thousands of procedures put on hold due to COVID-19, but patients waiting on elective surgeries will have to suffer through a four-phase plan with no clear end date.
That announcement came Tuesday, as the SHA announced 20 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Saskatchewan. Eighteen were in and around La Loche, the epicentre for the spread of the disease in Saskatchewan’s far north.
“This is not unexpected,” said SHA CEO Scott Livingstone said of the third straight day of double-digit numbers. “Our aggressive testing and contact tracing is helping us to identify and isolate people who are COVID positive.”
One of the remaining cases was reported from Prince Albert, though it was not connected to an outbreak previously reported at the hospital there. The SHA reported no new cases connected to the outbreak in Lloydminster’s hospital.
Officials also announced an outbreak at a dairy facility near Saskatoon, though there were few additional details.
“Immediate measures are being taken to reduce COVID-19 transmission at this worksite and with identified contacts,” Livingstone said.
According to Livingstone, the continued threat of COVID-19 demands a “gradual, phased-in plan” toward resuming services. That threat has not gone away, as a key measure of the disease’s spread is creeping up to what the SHA has previously called a “threshold” number.
According to the SHA, the effective reproductive number of the virus in Saskatchewan was 0.97 as of May 3. That means each infected person passes COVID-19 on to slightly less than one healthy person, on average. If that number stays under one, the disease will slowly peter out. If it shoots above, the virus spreads exponentially.
Dr. Jenny Basran, the SHA’S senior medial information officer, said that’s a cause for concern. The SHA is working on preparing numbers for specific regions, according to Basran. But she suggested the province-wide number is still valid, despite the highly regional nature of outbreaks.
“The current underlying situation in these different areas are completely interconnected because people move,” she said.
As of late April, about 3,800 surgeries has been postponed to free up capacity for a feared surge in COVID-19 cases that modelling suggested could require thousands of hospital beds. Dr. Susan Shaw, the SHA’S chief medical health officer, said there is no centralized information available on how many of those patients have seen their conditions worsen because of the wait.
But she said there’s no doubt that a long wait can be harmful.
“I have seen patients where earlier intervention could have helped improve their outcome,” she said. “If we continue to operate the way we are, these risks will mount.”
Livingstone said a plan to restart those procedures is “necessary.”
It’s up to surgeons to classify procedures in terms of how urgent they are. Currently, what are called “three-week urgent” surgeries can go forward. The first phase of the plan will expand that to include some “six-week urgent” surgeries that were postponed, like cataract procedures and hysterectomies.
Phase 1, which is set to begin on May 19, also foresees expanding MRI and CT scans to about 75 per cent of capacity. There will be an increase in “face-to-face” appointments with medical professionals, though virtual care will still be used when in-person meetings aren’t needed.
But the dates for the three later phases are “to be determined.” A wide range of elective surgeries like knee and hip replacement will wait for Phase 4, though Dr. Rashaad Hamsia, an SHA physician executive, acknowledged that such patients could face great discomfort.
According to health officials, the timing will be dictated by the spread of the disease, the risk of community transmission, demands on medical staff and the availability of supplies like personal protective equipment.
Livingstone said the plan will be “flexible and adaptive” in response to those metrics.