Is Canada ready for a widespread coronavirus outbreak?
Experts say that Canada has all of the necessities for widespread disease outbreak — negative-pressure isolation chambers, supplies, medical procedures and assessment protocol — but hospital overcrowding remains a concern.
Experts say that Canada has all of the necessities for widespread disease outbreak — negative-pressure isolation chambers, supplies, medical procedures and assessment protocol — but hospital overcrowding remains a concern.
Dr. Alan Drummond, co-chair of public affairs for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians and emergency physician at the Perth hospital, urged against fear-mongering and said Canada learned a lot of “hard-earned lessons” from the SARS outbreak in 2003.
His concerns, he said, were with whether Canada would have the space available to take care of its infected.
Drummond said the safe occupancy rate for any hospital is deemed to be at around 85 per cent, which provides “wiggle room” or a surge capacity in case of a sudden outbreak or increased demand for health care services.
But over the last two decades, he said, Canadian hospitals have been trying to function at 100 per cent capacity or higher on a day-to-day basis — made worse in Ontario, where he said many hospitals operate at 120 per cent capacity.
When a hospital is over capacity, he said patients going through the emergency department who are deemed sick enough to require admission find themselves without beds.
“They end up spending time in the hallway in the emergency department, waiting two, three days for transfer to a ward or to an ICU,” said Drummond. “That leads to a backlog of patients in the waiting room.
“It also leads to a backlog of ambulances waiting on the offload ramp, unable to get back to the community to respond to emergencies.”
“We can’t function on a good day. We can’t function in a mild flu season. What are we going to do if there is a major pandemic?”
He said the impact of a disease like COVID-19 could lead to cancelled surgeries, premature discharges or transferring older patients to smaller hospitals with less intensive care to make room.
If Canada were unable to prevent a pandemic, Drummond said, “some decisions are going to have to be made.”
If that terrible case scenario ever comes, will there need to be rationing of care and doctors making the decision of who lives and dies? I suspect the answer is yes,” he said.
As for whether or not Canada has enough beds, supplies, or is fully prepared for a pandemic, Colin Furness, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, stressed there was no way to know if any amount of preparation is really enough.
“There are no experts in what this looks like. We just haven’t done it. We haven’t been tested that way,” Furness said of Canada’s health care system. “There’s too many variables.”
