Hospitals in Mauricie-Center-Du-Quebec are under pressure, with 141 people hospitalized in the region on Thursday. There are 17 more in the past 24 hours, when the situation was already deemed critical at the start of the week.
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The region is in third position in the province in terms of the number of beds occupied in hospitals, after Montreal and Montérégie.
The Mauricie – Center-du-Québec ranks fifth among the regions with the most confirmed deaths since the start of the pandemic, without taking into account the rate per 100,000 inhabitants. The latest INSPQ report shows 13 additional deaths over the past seven days.
Despite the surge in new patients, CIUSSS-MCQ experts have decided to maintain level 3 alert for the moment. Therefore, the load shedding is still 50%, as announced on Tuesday.
However, some services will be reduced to concentrate human resources on those of greater importance. For example, reducing the time slots for blood samples, which will increase the capacity of COVID analyzes in laboratories, said the CIUSSS-MCQ information officer, Philippe Lehoux.
While regional public health reported 45 outbreaks in its hospitals on Wednesday, some are facing a power supply. This is the case with the psychiatry unit of the Shawinigan Medico-Legal Clinic.
Mr. Lehoux specifies that it is not an outbreak, since employees who tested positive would have contracted the virus outside the establishment, only to return to work after their period of isolation.
The service offer has remained the same, but prevention and disinfection measures have been stepped up. The situation is under surveillance by the CIUSSS-MCQ.
A new overflow unit in Cooke
Our internal and external sources affirmed, Thursday, that the whole thing is set in motion on the side of the CHSLD Cooke of Trois-Rivières to receive residents suffering from COVID-19.
The information was then confirmed by the CIUSSS-MCQ, which reports that steps are underway to transfer the hot zone from the CHSLD Cloutier-du-Rivage to that of Cooke.
The new unit will include ten beds to accommodate residents of the Cloutier Accommodation Center and others nearby. “This move is orchestrated so that the place is more central, both for the workforce and the residents who are transferred there,” said the information officer at the CIUSSS MCQ, Kellie Forand, in a press release.
For now, no move date has been set, Ms. Forand tells us, but our sources believe the residents will be transferred by early next week, or even Monday.