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During Thursday night’s virtual meeting with health-care professionals across the province, the top doctors in the Saskatchewan Health Authority painted a picture of dwindling hospital beds, patients being moved out of province, and triage protocols, all with a reprieve nowhere in sight.
Nearly every week, the SHA holds a physician town hall to communicate with doctors across the province. This week, at least one doctor asked what the situation is for the province in the COVID-19 pandemic and where it’s going.
“We are in it. When we always talked about a fourth wave or a wave where it was really going to tax our system, that’s where we’re at right now. And you know, the system it’s creaking, it’s shuddering under the burden, and the burden will grow,” replied Dr. John Froh, the SHA’s deputy chief medical officer on the pandemic.
As of Friday, there were 343 COVID patients in Saskatchewan hospitals, including 71 in intensive care. The province added another 576 new cases Friday.
Froh said there isn’t a lot of certainty around projections and modelling but he said it is clear to him that the province hasn’t turned the corner.
He said the number of high-flow oxygen patients in acute care is very high.
“When I look at going into a Thanksgiving weekend, we don’t have enhanced public health orders. This is not a good situation. This is a bad situation,” said Froh.
Dr. Susan Shaw, the SHA’s chief medical officer, also gave her take.
She explained that for the last two weeks, daily ICU admissions were about five each day, and from Wednesday into Thursday this week, it went up to 11. Shaw said that could be a blip, but it says the numbers aren’t slowing down.
Shaw said 55 per cent of their patients who present with COVID-19 only get their first test or diagnosis for the virus in the emergency room or ICU. That means they don’t have room for early intervention in those cases.
Like Froh, Shaw said there are a lot of patients on high-flow oxygen and hospitals have some patients who would normally be in an ICU bed but aren’t because there isn’t any room.
As for where the province is going, Shaw anticipates the SHA is going to have to send patients out of the province, but also that things could still get worse in Saskatchewan.
“I remain incredibly fearful and I think it’s becoming more and more real that we will need to move into our triage protocols, our allocation framework Step 2. I don’t want to, I want to be wrong, but I’m finding it hard to find a path that doesn’t get us there,” said Shaw.
Froh said teams are constantly looking at how to create more capacity in the system.
“The higher we go, the more difficult it is to create that capacity and the more other things we have to slow down in order to create that capacity,” explained Froh.
Froh also said the SHA will continue to advocate for help and get partners from other jurisdictions to provide resources and beds.
Speaking to the doctors who were tuned in to the town hall, Froh said they’re all going to have to dig very deep, and while that could be challenging, it’s what they have to do.