First, the mayor got sick: portrait of a difficult week in Montreal

This week in Montreal started with Mayor Valrie Plante testing positive for COVID-19, and suddenly nearly every Montrealer knew someone who had it, too.

Things grew more ominous by the day, if not by the hour. Cases in the province shot up past 3,000, then 6,000 and Thursday, 9,397. There were3,668 new cases in Montreal alone Wednesday, the day after the city announced it was reinstating its state of emergency.

Local Public Health Director Dr. Mylne Drouinconfirmed Thursday morning what many have observed among their acquaintances: that the majority of those infected are between the ages of 18 and 44, and live in neighbourhoods with younger populations, such as La Petite-Patrie, Plateau-Mont-Royal, Mile End, Villeray and Hochelaga.

Drouin said the city's positivity rate is now close to 20 per cent, meaning one in five of people getting public PCR tests are infected. Ninety per cent of those cases are now of the Omicron variant.

As lineups snaked around city blocks andgrew until public testing clinics became overrun, some turned to the private system.

Antonella Argento, co-founder of Beacon Health Care, a private medical service that sends nurses to people's homes to test them, said her staff has been 10 times busier than usual.

"We were expecting a Christmas rush, but nothing like this. We were expecting to test travellers, but now it's not even travellers, it's people looking for peace of mind."

Asked if there were parts of the city with higher demand, Argentosaid, "It's all over."

Hospitalizations have risen by about 30 per day in the province, but frontline workers say even twice that amount could overwhelm already beleaguered hospitals.

Many of those hospitalizations remain patients infected with the Delta variant, but Maisonneuve-RosemontHospital emergency physician Dr. Bernard Mathieu said some Omicron patients are starting to trickle in.

"People are showing up with symptoms which are relatively minor and we don't see respiratory insufficiency, like we saw in the last wave. It's not as bad as it was in last wave as far as severity of symptoms," Mathieu told CBC Thursday.

"That's a blessing for us because we couldn't face the music if it was something else."

Mathieu worries it could be the calm before the storm, though. Hospitals have started delaying surgeries and non-urgent procedures, which will lead to sicker non-COVID patients later on, and more and more of his colleagues are off the job because they are either infected or were in close contact with someone who was.

"We're a little scared of what's going on. It doesn't look good. And we really need people to get vaccinated, and to stay away from other people," Mathieu said.

If not, "we're going to just be swamped with COVID cases."

WATCH| Montreal Mayor Valrie Plante says she followed all the rulesbut still caught COVID:

Montreal's mayor describes her recovery from COVID-19

3 years ago

Duration 1:16

Valrie Plante says she's on the mend after contracting COVID-19. Montreal's mayor issued a plea for citizens to stay vigilant, during a virtual press conference Tuesday.

Homeless services 'preparing for the worst'

Another frontline servicebracing itself in Montreal arehomeless shelters. Part of the reason Plante said the city once again declared a state of emergency was to offer emergency services to people without homes.

The mayor said the status would allow the city to "rapidly finalize contracts to create emergency housing."

milieFortier, director of emergency services at Old Mission Brewery, said the shelter's isolation dorms have only recently admitted a few new cases, but that staff "are preparing for the worst."

"We've definitely been feeling a sense of urgency in the past couple days. We're waiting for the wave to arrive," Fortiersaid on Radio-Canada'sTout un matin,noting waves of the virus typically start among travellers, their contacts and eventually reachthe homeless population.

Homeless people are 20times more likely of ending up in hospital with COVID-19 than the general population.

Fortiersaidlocal homeless services had already been petitioning the city to create more emergency housing as the weather gets colder and as the city's homeless population has doubled since 2020.

She explained that when outbreaks in shelters become too significant, they have to stop taking admissions.

That's what Nakuset, the director of theNative Women's Shelterof Montreal, announced on Twitterher organization would be doing as of Wednesday, "due to the severity of the Omicron variant, and to keep both staff and residents safe."

Some outbreaks in long-term care

While much of the province's focushas been onhospitals,some outbreaks have begun to pop up in nursing homes and in long-term care.

In an overview published Wednesday by public health, there were 34 deaths due to recent outbreaks in long-term care homes across the province.

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dub said Wednesday evening that public health officials were following the situation"very, very closely," but were not yet concerned.

As the province and city await a storm, it will be hard to get a real-time picture of the situation over the holidays.

Quebec Public Health will not be publishing daily data on Dec. 24, 25 and 26 nor on Dec. 31, and Jan. 1 and 2.

Projections published yesterday by the province's public health institute, theInstitut national de
sant publique du Qubec(INSPQ), predict a rise in hospitalizations about a week after the holidays.