Assiniboia welcomes Weyburn Red Wings with open arms during ammonia shutdown
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Saskatchewan hit another record high for COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICU admissions on Friday, and it’s expected things will keep getting worse.
“I would say, broadly speaking, our health system is really in a state of crisis,” said Derek Miller, the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s emergency operations centre commander.
Miller explained the surge in cases the hospitals are seeing now is from cases that were identified 10 to 14 days ago.
“What we’ve seen since then is a continued increase in cases per day. And so based on that, we are anticipating our demand in our hospitals to continue to increase as well,” said Miller.
Miller said SHA officials are hoping that new public health measures like the masking mandate and upcoming proof of vaccination requirements will help bend the curve on cases, but they’re still going to prepare for more.
The health system is slowing down other procedures and services in order to create space and resources for 125 COVID-19 ICU beds, and 350 non-ICU COVID-19 spaces. As of Friday, there were 215 people with COVID getting inpatient care and 61 people in ICU beds.
“Even if we were able to start seeing the daily case numbers go down, it would take probably two weeks before we would start to see that have an impact in our hospitals,” Miller said Friday. “And then when you take into account the length of stay, it would take some time after that before we really start to see reductions in our numbers.”
So the people who will be in hospital in two weeks are being identified as COVID-19 cases now.
Demand for services is increasing in Regina and rural areas now from northern areas and Saskatoon. Lori Garchinski, the SHA’s executive director of provincial services and tertiary care, said the SHA is not at the point in Regina where it doesn’t have any ICU capacity, but it is strained.
Miller admits it’s hard to know what is going to happen long term because it all depends on the actions of the people of Saskatchewan.
“All of this really emphasizes the need for people to make the right choice about vaccination, to follow the public health orders, wear a mask and so on,” said Miller.