1) Intensive-care units and emergency rooms in Montreal are beginning to fill up with a combination of #COVID19 patients and those with other medical problems, front-line workers told me on New Year's Day. In this short thread, I will explain this serious and growing problem.
2) “It is getting more challenging to find beds, that is for sure,” a veteran ER physician told me. “But I have yet to have a patient stuck so far. It is coming, though.” During the first wave, some overcrowded Montreal hospitals sent some #COVID19 patients to regional centres.
3) But in this second wave, those regional hospitals are full of their own #COVID19 patients. With cases and hospitalizations still rising and absenteeism increasing among health-care workers (because they’re getting sick), the acute-care system is now at the breaking point.
4) This is what Dr. Gilbert Boucher, president of the Association des spécialistes en médecine d’urgence du Québec, had to say on the subject: “Almost all of the intensive care beds on the island of Montreal are taken, not only by COVID patients."
5) “When you put the two populations together (COVID and non-COVID), you end up at full capacity," Boucher told LCN. During the first wave last spring, Montreal ICUs had very few non-COVID patients and emergency rooms were eerily silent. That is no longer the case.
6) Meanwhile, Cité-de-la-Santé hospital in Laval has been hit by a major #COVID19 outbreak, with three ER doctors and three other staff getting infected, according to La Presse. This underscores the extent to which some ERs have become breeding grounds for the #coronavirus.
7) Given this context, Health Minister Christian Dubé tweeted on New Year’s Eve that “if this trend continues, there would be additional offloading of non-COVID treatments in our hospitals.” This was done last spring, resulting in a current backlog of more than 131,000 surgeries.
8) You may have noticed that this thread contains no new figures or charts. That’s because the Health Ministry has suspended the daily updates until Sunday. But rest assured, my Twitter threads will continue. I already have one lined up for Saturday. End of thread. Stay safe.
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