Relieving the pressure
Sunnybrook field hospital will begin accepting patients next week.
As COVID-19 case counts and intensive care admissions reach crisis levels in Toronto, the field hospital under construction in a parking lot at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre will begin accepting patients next week, the Star has learned.
As well, next week, Toronto Western Hospital and Toronto General Hospital, both part of the University Health Network, will have large tents serving as additional patient waiting areas to help reduce crowding in the overstretched emergency departments.
The tent adjacent to Toronto Western was partly built on Thursday and the tent outside Toronto General will be put up on Saturday; both will be “operationalized early next week,” Dr. Erin O’Connor, deputy medical director of emergency departments at UHN, told the Star.
“These tents will provide waiting space to help patients physically distance because we are now not able to do that in our ER. At this point, there are just too many people coming in.”
This is the first time UHN has needed to build tents to accommodate patients waiting for emergency care, O’Connor said.
The third wave has brought an increase in people — both those with COVID-19 and those without the virus — coming to emergency departments. Those who do not have COVID-19 are sometimes presenting sicker because they have delayed care during the pandemic, O’Connor said.
“We’re seeing a lot of patients coming to the ER; the evenings are particularly busy,” she said, noting on her most recent shift she assessed seven patients with COVID-19, six of whom were admitted to hospital. “And while we are seeing them as fast as we can, we’re still not able to see them as fast as they are coming.”
Throughout the pandemic, UHN has had COVID-19 safety measures in place in its two emergency departments, including chairs spaced apart and Plexiglas areas, but O’Connor said the flow of patients in the third wave is creating crowded waiting areas.
“We have patients who are rightly very concerned about how close they’re having to sit next to other people, about other people in the waiting room taking off their masks, or vomiting openly in the waiting room or not following the precautions,” she said. “They are worried about their own safety. And we’re worried about their safety, too, which is why we’re adding (the tents) as an additional measure.”
The two tents will serve only as additional waiting areas for emergency patients at each hospital, with chairs spaced for physical distancing, O’Connor said.
Sunnybrook’s field hospital — known officially as a “mobile health unit” — is meant to relieve pressure on a health-care system overwhelmed by the pandemic. The field hospital will house patients who are recovering or have recovered from COVID-19 and are waiting to go home or be transitioned to another care setting.
According to a hospital source who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak about the matter, the provincial Ministry of Health has asked Sunnybrook to be ready to open the field hospital on Monday. However, the opening may be delayed by a few days so they can make sure they have adequate staff, the source said.
Sunnybrook would not confirm specifics, but hospital spokesperson Katherine Nazimek said it is “likely some beds (will open) sometime next week.”
“We can confirm that if the ministry needs us, we’re ready to go,” Nazimek said. In a previous news release, Sunnybrook stated its mobile health unit would open 20 beds by the end of April.
In response to questions from the Star, a Ministry of Health spokesperson said Sunnybrook “is expecting to take patients
this month.”
“Temporary beds provide increased capacity to the health system as a whole by freeing up acute and critical care capacity,” the spokesperson said.
The move to open Sunnybrook’s mobile health unit early comes as Ontario saw a record daily high of 4,736 COVID-19 cases on Thursday and 29 deaths. There were 1,932 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the province on Thursday, including 659 patients in intensive care and 442 on ventilators.
“Our situation is dire,” Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate chief medical officer of health, said in a Thursday afternoon news conference.
Under construction since February, Sunnybrook’s field hospital stands in a large parking lot at the north end of its Bayview campus, where rows of tents that look like a military base camp take up an area half the size of a football field.
The field hospital is a visual representation of Ontario’s failure to manage the pandemic, said Colin Furness, an epidemiologist at the University
of Toronto.
“This was avoidable. Let’s be absolutely clear: we had absolute precision knowledge of this two months ago. And instead of taking steps to prevent it, we built a field hospital,” he said.
“When a health-care system is overwhelmed, mortality goes way way up. And that’s what we’re facing.”
The field hospital will have capacity for 84 patients and is a joint project with the federal and provincial governments. It is a fully contained patient unit with “all the necessary supplies and equipment to provide safe medical care,” Sunnybrook said in a news release.
“This new unit means that specialized resources, such as intensive care, can be made available in hospitals for those who need it most,” Sunnybrook said.
The tents are supported by an aluminum frame and made of PVC-coated fabric that is durable, waterproof and fire-retardant. It is insulated for all weather conditions and equipped with temperature control.