Three COVID patients transferred to Ont.

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This article was published 20/05/2021 (1954 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba has recently had to transfer three COVID-positive ICU patients from the province to Thunder Bay, Ont., to free up resources as hospitalizations due to the virus continue to increase.

“Over the past week, Manitoba’s hospitals have been dealing with a significant increase in admissions, to both medicine units and ICUs,” a Shared Health spokesperson wrote in a statement obtained by the Sun. “The compounding effect of multiple days of admissions well over the norm and far beyond what we experienced during wave two has placed extreme strain on our staffing resources.”

This increase in cases includes a 96-hour period from May 13-17 when 34 patients were admitted to ICUs — almost half of Manitoba’s pre-COVID ICU capacity of 72 patients.

Shared Health also reported that on Tuesday, no ICU patients recovered well enough to be transferred to a medicine ward and the number of patients in medicine wards needing to be at risk of needing to be transferred to ICUs is putting critical care capacity “at significant risk.”

Beyond the transfers to Thunder Bay, some patients are being transferred to personal care homes with capacity. Other patients in Winnipeg are being transferred outside the city to create room in tertiary and acute care facilities. Transfers are also occurring between facilities in rural Manitoba.

According to the statement, surgeries are being further reduced to meet COVID demand. In some cases, surgeries will be shifted to facilities outside of Winnipeg.

“We cannot stress enough to Manitobans that we are seeing patients who are younger and healthier than those we saw during Wave Two,” the statement reads. “These patients are very, very ill and they require our care. We cannot sustain these kinds of surges for long. As we head into a long weekend, it is critical that Manitobans stay home. The May long weekend is often the source of many visits to emergency departments throughout the province.”

At Monday’s COVID-19 media briefing, Shared Health chief nursing officer Lanette Siragusa had said transfers to other provinces were not yet being considered.

“We are not, as of yet, but that may be something that we have to look at,” she said. “There’s all sorts of options that we need to look at if we exceed our capacity in Manitoba. But no, at this point we have not transferred and I have not had any discussions with Ontario or Saskatchewan on helping us out. I think any possibility could be available to us if we would want to explore if we needed to.”

In question period on Wednesday, Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew said the transfer of Manitoba patients to Thunder Bay was “shocking.”

“You wanna talk about highway medicine?” Kinew asked Health Minister Heather Stefanson. “It is here and it is a result of the cuts of this government. How does the minister justify sending Manitobans to an ICU in Thunder Bay rather than making investments in health care and staff right here in Manitoba?”

In her response, Stefanson said her government has been investments in Manitoba and reiterated several of the points laid out in Shared Health’s response.

“These decisions are clinical, they are not political,” Stefanson said. “They have been made to make sure people’s health and safety are put first and foremost.”

In his follow-up, Kinew said Stefanson declined to mention that the patients had been transferred because Manitoba lacked the capacity to care for them and accused the government of not investing enough in ICU capacity in earlier waves of the pandemic.

Rebutting, Stefanson said Manitoba has had a long-standing reciprocal relationship with northwestern Ontario where patients come to Manitoba to get access to health-care services.

In a later email to the Sun, a Shared Health spokesperson said that as of midnight on Wednesday, there were 131 total ICU patients in Manitoba, including 15 in Brandon. Of those 131 patients, 80 are hospitalized due to COVID-19.

Earlier this week, the Winnipeg Free Press reported that Stefanson said the province could expand its ICU capacity to 170 beds.

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