1) As #COVID19 continues to spread across Quebec — causing outbreaks in schools and bars — the province’s health-care system remains more vulnerable than ever. In this thread, I will highlight the latest problems to hit acute-care hospitals in the #pandemic.
2) Over the weekend, the Hôpital de Gatineau suspended its intensive-care service following a sit-in protest by burned out nurses on Friday. This has occurred as the Outaouais region has been recording slightly more #COVID19 cases than during the first wave in the #pandemic.
3) Emergency-room nurses also staged a sit-in at the Hôpital du Suroît on Thursday in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield. The hospital responded by taking the nurses’ union to the Quebec labor tribunal to have the sit-in declared an illegal pressure tactic.
4) On Saturday, ER nurses at the Lakeshore General Hospital in Pointe-Claire staged their second sit-in in a week to draw attention to what they say are unacceptable working conditions during the #pandemic. On Sunday night, the ER was overflowing to 123% of its capacity.
5) Nurses often staged sit-ins before the #pandemic to complain about mandatory overtime, which the Coalition Avenir Québec pledged to abolish in the last election campaign. But sit-ins during the current health crisis underscore the system's fragility amid a #COVID19 resurgence.
6) In Montreal, 800 nurses have quit since March, further weakening the health network as it seeks to clear a backlog of tens of thousands of surgeries. People are also walking around with cancers they don’t even realize they have because of missed diagnoses during the #pandemic.
7) Should the current #COVID resurgence cause a spike in hospitalizations, as it did in the first wave, Quebec’s health infrastructure would quickly become overwhelmed. On Sunday, the province reported a relatively small net increase of 22 hospitalizations since a week earlier.
8) Quebec’s rolling seven-day average of #COVID19 cases rose to 25.08 cases per million Sunday from 23.84 the day before. The Shaker bar-restaurant and adjoining Taverne 666 in Rimouski (they share a bathroom) declared an outbreak Sunday. Yet bars remain open all over Quebec.
9) Meanwhile, the cumulative number of schools where at least one student or teacher tested positive for the #coronavirus rose to 252 Sunday night from 245 earlier the same day, according to covidecolesquebec.org. Two Quebec City elementary schools have declared outbreaks.
10) Perhaps it’s now time for the Education Ministry to give the province’s overcrowded public schools what they’ve been asking for: the right to require that their students wear masks in classrooms, as is currently the case in Ontario and the city of Edmonton.
11) Meanwhile, Montreal posted 57 #COVID cases on Sunday, up from 55 the day before, as the orange line in the chart below shows. The city, which is expected to be revised to a yellow pre-alert Monday, reported a seven-day average of 24.39 cases per million, the same as Saturday.
12) At the neighborhood level in the metropolis, the hitherto #COVID19 hot spot of Montreal North observed an uptick of a dozen cases Sunday. The health district of Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel also counted cases in the double digits, as the chart below makes clear.
13) Since July, I’ve argued in this nightly Twitter thread that authorities should renew public-health restrictions to lower community transmission of the #coronavirus for the sake of our schools. This is true. But it should also be done to protect our hospitals. End of thread.
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