At a time when more than 11,600 workers are absent from the health network, the number of new hospitalizations is reaching new heights. In the past week, no less than 1,160 people infected with COVID-19 have been admitted to hospitals, more than at the height of the second wave.
By way of comparison, 930 new admissions were recorded from January 3 to 9, 2021.
All age groups have seen a record number of new hospitalizations in the past week, except for those 80 and over, for a total of 1,396 people hospitalized so far.
Consequence: hospitals will have to load shedding. The CHU de Québec, for example, announced on Sunday that the activities of its operating room would be reduced to 56%. “And this is really not the only hospital in this situation”, notes the president of the Association of specialists in emergency medicine of Quebec, Dr Gilbert Boucher.
In Quebec emergencies, the number of visits has decreased in recent days. Before Christmas, 9,000 patients a day attended. We are now no longer around 7600, indicates the Dr Butcher. “This drop is attributable to confinement. People do less activity ”, sums up the DD Judy Morris, President of the Quebec Association of Emergency Physicians. But on hospital floors, “COVID units fill up quickly,” says Dr Butcher.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, THE PRESS
Emergencies at the Cité-de-la-Santé hospital, in Laval
At the same time, a growing number of healthcare workers have to take time off, being infected with the virus. “And we expect it to get worse in the next few days,” says Dr Boucher, who is worried about the situation because the staff in place are “down”.
According to the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS), 11,602 health workers are currently absent. At the height of the first wave of COVID-19, there were 12,000 of them in the same situation.
We can say that the situation remains critical. Because there is a lack of workers. It makes an explosive mixture. We do load shedding. We have to transfer COVID patients from one establishment to another because we are short of space.
The DD Judy Morris, President of the Quebec Association of Emergency Physicians
Moved from hospital
Johanne Bastien is one of the COVID-19 patients who had to be transferred. She presented on December 20 at the Suroît hospital in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield. The woman, already having a precarious lung condition, had taken a rapid test which declared her positive for COVID-19.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MARYSE ROBITAILLE
Johanne bastien
“She was already in treatment for bronchitis, then she did not react at all to the treatments, she had a lot of fever,” says her daughter, Maryse Robitaille.
Support at the Suroît hospital, Mme Bastien had to be intubated in intensive care on December 25. That day, Mme Robitaille is informed that his mother will be sent to Honoré-Mercier hospital, in Saint-Hyacinthe, “because in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, there was not enough staff. [et] there were starting to be too many COVID patients, ”explains Mme Robitaille.
Johanne Bastien was therefore transferred to intensive care at Honoré-Mercier hospital, an hour and a half from her home. The patient has since woken up from the artificial coma she was in. Maryse Robitaille hopes that her mother can once again be transferred to the Suroît hospital when her state of health allows it. “But it spills over everywhere. So, we hope that there will be room in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, ”she says, saying she is particularly grateful to health workers. “They’re really overwhelmed, but they don’t make you feel like they’re [le sont] She says.
Limit vacations for certain workers
In some regions of Quebec, the staff shortage is so severe that we are considering resorting to ministerial decree 2020-007, which makes it possible to force full-time work, limit vacations and allow the shedding of workers, that is, to move employees from one sector to another.
At the CISSS de Laval, spokesperson Judith Goudreau confirms that “certain measures of the ministerial decree will begin to be put in place this week”. These measures will only apply to services “where the absenteeism rate linked to COVID is high”, explains Mme Goudreau.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, THE PRESS
Cité-de-la-Santé Hospital, in Laval
The MSSS emphasizes that “many establishments have submitted plans under [l’arrêté ministériel] 2020-007 ”, a measure qualified as“ last resort ”. “Although coming from all over Quebec, we can still see more difficult situations in certain regions,” indicates MSSS spokesperson Marie-Claude Lacasse, who speaks in particular of the regions of Montreal and the Capitale-Nationale.
The DD Morris explains that the return of this ministerial decree was feared.
It always gives a hard blow. What I find sad is that it still puts the burden on the same people. On already exhausted staff, on the verge of leaving the boat.
The DD Judy Morris, President of the Quebec Association of Emergency Physicians
“The effect on the team is immediate,” wrote on Twitter the Dr Joseph Dahine, intensivist at the Cité-de-la-Santé hospital and medical director at the CISSS de Laval. “I have a lot of people in tears. It is extremely dehumanizing. Please, let’s think of another solution. ”
Another sign that the staff shortage is major, the CISSS de l’Outaouais announced Monday that the emergencies of the municipality of Saint-André-Avellin would be temporarily closed from January 5 to 28. The Saint-André-Avellin emergency staff will go to the emergency department at Papineau hospital in Gatineau, where many employees are missing.
The next decisive weeks
If the situation remains difficult in hospitals, it will be necessary to observe carefully how the situation will develop in the coming weeks. Because in other countries, the number of COVID-19 cases has skyrocketed with the Omicron variant before falling just as quickly, notes the Dr Butcher. Will this be the case in Quebec?
“We hope so,” he said. The DD Morris said, however, that on Monday, more than 15,000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in the province. And this is only the tip of the iceberg since screening does not provide a real picture of the situation.
“And it takes about two weeks before the serious cases arrive at the hospital… We hope that the new cases will decrease with the current measures. But we’ll have to look at the coming weeks to find out, ”she said.
In intensive care, the situation remains under control for the moment. Currently 162 people are there. In January 2021, this number had risen to 231. “As for the number of intensive care beds, we still have room for maneuver,” notes the Dr Germain Poirier, president of the Société des intensivistes du Québec. The shortage of personnel does not spare intensive care. But according to the Dr Poirier, the situation is more tense on the floors, where the number of hospitalized patients is multiplying and where the staff is lacking.
Hospitalized for, or with?
Healthcare facilities are trying to refine their data to find out how many patients with COVID-19 are hospitalized for this disease, and how many have COVID-19 but hospitalized for something else. The president of the Association of specialists in emergency medicine of Quebec, Dr Gilbert Boucher, however, wishes to clarify that regardless of what disease a patient is treated for, if he is positive for COVID-19, more staff will be necessary. “On COVID units, it takes double the staff. And we don’t have a lot of staff anymore, ”he says. The Dr Boucher also points out that the Omicron variant infects a huge number of people. “Out of the large number of people affected, people end up being very sick,” he says, particularly worried about the unvaccinated people. The latter hopes “that the population will continue to respect health measures and that we will see a drop in cases in the coming weeks”. Otherwise, “it will be like in the Sherbrooke region before Christmas: difficult,” he says.