Second day of lower cases, higher fatalities

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This article was published 03/12/2020 (1950 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Despite fewer than 300 new cases of COVID-19 announced in Manitoba on Wednesday, it was a second consecutive tough day when it came to fatalities.

A day after 16 Manitobans were announced to have died from the virus, another 14 were added to the list on Wednesday, adding up to 30 deaths in the first two days of December.

All of the deaths came from the Winnipeg and Southern Health-Santé Sud health regions, with seven of the 14 coming from care homes.

At their daily briefing on Wednesday, chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin and chief nursing officer Lanette Siragusa said that a paramedic is on hand 24-7 at the Fairview Personal Care Home in Brandon and a paramedic is on hand at the Grandview Personal Care Home during the day to assist staff with outbreaks at those facilities.

In the whole province, 48 care homes have identified at least one case of COVID-19, said Siragusa.

The Canadian Red Cross has staff on site at the Maples and St. Norbert personal care homes and the Golden Links Lodge in Winnipeg. The organization also has plans to start working at the Holy Family Home in Winnipeg.

“That will be focusing on infection prevention control and assessment and staff will be providing guidance,” Siragusa said.

With 277 cases announced on Wednesday, that makes two consecutive days in Manitoba with a daily caseload of under 300.

“We can’t rest at these numbers, even though we’ve seen some minor improvements,” Roussin said. “Our case numbers are still high, we still have too much strain on our ICUs and hospitals and too much strain on our health-care providers.”

He later said that public health is seeing very early indicators that daily numbers might be coming down.

Siragusa added that the province’s critical care program is at 147 per cent beyond its pre-COVID capacity as of Wednesday morning. Of the 106 people in the province’s critical care units, 51 of them have COVID-19.

She said there are plans to open an additional 14 critical care beds.

Of the 78 patients on ventilators, 44 of them have COVID-19.

The opening of a 138-room alternative isolation accommodation facility in Winnipeg was announced, with Siragusa saying that Brandon would have its own accommodation facility open in the coming weeks. There are now 14 isolation sites in the province, with nine smaller isolation sites in the northern part of the province.

These facilities provide people with COVID-19 who do not have a suitable place to self-isolate, like those living in homes with other people or homeless people, with a safe place to stay while recovering from the virus to prevent community transmission.

The outbreaks at St. Paul’s Personal Care Home in Dauphin and the Kekinan Centre in Winnipeg have been declared over.

New outbreaks have been declared at the Morris General Hospital, the Rosewood Lodge Personal Care Home in Stonewall and the Carpathia Children’s Centre in Winnipeg.

Efforts to improve call response times for Health Links continues. Siragusa said the average call wait has been reduced to 14 minutes for the approximately 2,000 calls the line receives per day.

On Wednesday morning, the province and Doctors Manitoba announced they had come to an agreement to compensate doctors for work they miss due to testing positive due to COVID-19, being exposed to a confirmed case or being required to isolate.

Doctors can apply for coverage of up to 10 days of missed work due to isolation at a time to a maximum of 20 missed working days. This benefit is retroactive to Sept. 28, when Winnipeg was raised to level orange on the province’s pandemic response system.

A release sent out on behalf of both groups said 30 doctors in the province have tested positive for COVID-19 so far.

During a media conference on Tuesday, Premier Brian Pallister said it was his “gut feeling” that current health restrictions would remain in place for a while yet. Roussin was asked Wednesday if he agreed with that sentiment.

“I think that where we are right now where we’re seeing our ICUs over capacity, our health-care system very strained and Dec. 11 is coming up quite quickly,” he said. “I can’t advise on the specifics, but we’re going to have some restrictions in place for the near future for the foreseeable future because we can’t sustain numbers like we’re seeing right now.”

Daily test numbers have been lower recently, coming in around 2,000 to 2,500 on average where they used to be at 3,000 or above. Roussin was asked why the numbers have dropped.

“Most of it relates on demand,” he said. “Most of our specimen collection sites are working at under capacity, so there’s less demand for testing. Sometimes there’s a little bit of a timing issue where specimens that have been collected sent that day to the lab haven’t yet been reported out, haven’t made the 9:30 a.m. time for that.”

However, Roussin said that he would still only recommend that symptomatic people or those directed by public health should go for testing.

Asked why the province hasn’t used some of its unused testing capacity to expand testing in schools, Roussin says it’s important to note that it has only been a few days of lower testing numbers and that the province can’t change its approach based on a few days.

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