A new year renews concerns for hospitals grappling with COVID-19, experts warn

OTTAWA

The fraught, often frightening year of 2020 may be over, but experts warn the dawn of a new one doesn’t leave behind the troubles caused by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patients in multiple Canadian hotspots are flooding hospitals at an alarming rate and are expected to arrive in even greater numbers in the weeks to come, experts said Friday.

“If these rates of increase continue the way they are, the months of January and February are absolutely going to be brutal. It’s just a question of how brutal will it be,” said Anthony Dale, head of the Ontario Hospital Association.

One-fifth of the province’s intensive care capacity is now devoted to COVID19 patients, with Toronto and the regions of Peel, York, and WindsorEssex hardest hit.

“We will see accelerating numbers of unnecessary deaths - more people dying. We will see more people suffering in intensive care and in hospitals,” Dale said.

The spike could jeopardize elective surgeries and other care. Some hospitals have already started to cancel procedures, adding to the 160,000 that were nixed in the first wave, he said.

“Even though COVID’s going on, people still get cancer, they still get heart disease, they still need organ transplants,” Dale said.

Hospitals in the greater Montreal area are on track to exceed capacity within the next three weeks, with almost two-thirds of beds designated for coronavirus patients already occupied, according to a report from INESSS, a government-funded health institute.

However, the projection did not take into account Premier Francois Legault’s shutdown of all non-essential businesses in the province from Dec. 25 to Jan. 11., which could help curb the spread, said Dr. Luc Boileau, who heads the institute.

“The good news behind all of this is the vaccinations coming on,” Boileau said. “The impact of this will be manifest on the outbreaks inside health services and of course lowering mortality.”

Nearly 500,000 doses of the PfzierBioNTech vaccine, which requires ultracold storage, have been distributed across the Canada since Health Canada approved it on Dec. 9.

The Moderna vaccine - green-lighted on Dec. 23 - has also started to roll off tarmacs, beginning to reach remote and First Nations communities over the past week.

The country’s not in the clear yet. Individuals need to make sensible choices around social distancing and staying home, said Tim Sly, an epidemiologist and professor emeritus at Ryerson University’s School of Public Health.

“We’re still seeing knucklehead parties from seven to 14 to 25 people, raving out there with no masks, lots of booze and drinking and hugging and kissing and so on,” Sly said. “That’s avoidable.

“That puts more pressure then on the nursing staff and the physicians and the ICUs ... Then you have to start turning people away or making awful decisions: `We’ll treat these grandparents but not these grandparents. Maybe find another hospital facility. Good luck.’ “

Surgeries typically ramp-up following a winter holiday lull, but more could now be sidelined, said Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious disease physician at St. Joseph’s hospital in Hamilton and an associate professor at McMaster University.

“If there’s no beds to put those patients in afterwards, unfortunately those surgeries just get cancelled,” he said.

On Thursday, the Public Health Agency of Canada said more than 720 patients hospitalized with the virus are now receiving treatment in ICUs, including 337 in Ontario and 165 in Quebec.