Outbreaks of influenza, COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses affecting children put so much pressure on the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) that they have to seek help from the Cross -Canadian Red.
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The organization will be deploying administrative staff during the week to lighten the work of the CHEO teams, who will be able to focus on the care of the children.
The Ottawa hospital complex, like pediatric hospitals in Quebec and the rest of Canada, is facing a worrying wave of sick children this fall.
“We have redeployed staff to the nursing and surgical units, added new beds and workers to the pediatric intensive care unit, emergency and inpatient unit, and asked non-medical staff to support medical teams when possible,” CHEO said on Sunday.
In addition to the Red Cross, several hospitals and organizations in and around Ottawa are also helping out by loaning staff or accepting patient transfers, CHEO said.
The deployment of Red Cross personnel to a hospital to relieve staff is reminiscent of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the organization lent a hand to several establishments. On the Quebec side, no Red Cross team has yet had to be deployed this fall, however the organization confirmed on Sunday.
Quebec’s public health director, Luc Boileau, will hold a press conference on Monday to provide an update on the situation.
Pediatric flu
After two years marked by COVID-19, influenza, carried by thousands of cases of H3N2 flu, is considerably increasing the occupation of emergency rooms in pediatric hospitals, at rates not seen for a long time, can we see in the data the most recent influenza watch bulletin from the federal government.
Thus, for week 47 from November 20 to 26, 223 children under the age of 16 were hospitalized due to the flu in the country. In comparison, during the corresponding week for the five flu seasons preceding the pandemic (2014-2015 to 2019-2020), there was an average of 11 children hospitalized due to the flu.
Children are, proportionally, the most represented patients in hospitals due to the flu, with 707 hospitalizations, including 95 in intensive care, among children under 16 since the start of the season.
More broadly, those aged 0 to 19 account for 50.8% of the 14,385 laboratory-confirmed flu cases since the end of August. Alone, 0-4 year olds account for 18.1% of flu cases.
“The highest cumulative rate of hospitalizations through week 47 was among children younger than 5 years old (41/100,000 population) and adults older than 65 years old (33/100,000 population),” is it underlined in the bulletin.