As COVID-19 case numbers trend downward, doctor warns Sask. not 'out of the woods'

Doctors in Saskatchewan intensive care units pleaded for help as wards filled up with COVID-19 patients, but as case numbers fall and the fourth wave ebbs, health-care professionals and union heads warn against relaxing.

At its worst stage, Saskatchewan held the position for highest numberof COVID-19 ICU patients per capita of any province.

According to data collected by CBC News, there were 88 Saskatchewan patients with the illnessin intensive care including patients transferred to Ontario for out-of-province care on Oct. 20.

On Nov. 1, there were 26ICU patients in Ontarioabout one-third of the province's 81 recorded that day and the most patients in Ontario at one time.

When their populations are calculated to match Saskatchewan's, other provinces who were deeply affected by the pandemic barely breached a relative 70 ICU patients at their worst moments in the pandemic.

On Sunday, there were 45 patients in Saskatchewan ICUs and another 12 being cared for in Ontario, according to the province's COVID-19 dashboard.

Despite a recent drop in cases, Dr. Alexander Wong, an infectious disease specialist from the University of Saskatchewan, warns that the province isn't "out of the woods."

"At the end of the day we're probably past the worst of it at this point, [but] I wouldn't say we're in a good situation at this stage," Wong said.

Wong said that the province afforded hospital staff significant "wiggle room" by offloading patients to Ontario for care, but it "should have ideally never ever been close to doing that in the first place."

At its peak, Wong said there were discussions about formal triaging, which would assign degrees of urgency to patient illness.

"That was kind of the absolute worst case scenario that we were desperately trying to avoid. It sounds as though it was avoided but barely avoided, at the end of the day," he said.

"If we had not transferred people out to Ontario, we would have had to implement formal triage."

Intensive Care in Sask.

Part of the reason intensive care units in Saskatchewan struggled was because only Regina and Saskatoon are outfitted to handle the province's sickest individuals andthose who have recently come from complex surgeries.

Care beds for those patients were taken by COVID-19 patients who, according to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, spent an average of more than 11 days in ICUs in Saskatchewan from April to June, 2021.

The transfer of patients opened up beds for emergencies, but it also worked to relievesome of the human resources needed for care.

"There's no question that the people that have borne the brunt of all this have been front-line workers," Wong said.

"Front-line health-care workers, especially the nurses, especially the respiratory therapists with regards to those people who work in the ICUs."

Weight on front-line health-care workers

Tracy Zambory, the president of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, said some of the nurses she spoke to from the St. Paul's Hospital in Saskatoon hadn't felt relief by the transferring of patients.

"The pressure is still great, we are still in a deep crisis in this province," she said.

"We're so grateful to the people in Ontario, to the health care system in Ontario but there really has been no effect felt at this point," she said in an interview last week.

She also thanked the federal government for sending assistance.

Zambory urged provincial leaders to listen to doctors, medical health officers and nurses to increase public health measures.

"We did not have to be transporting people to Ontario, we did not have to be stacking people in intensive care units," she said.

Refocusing efforts

Wong said that leading indicators suggest that we've past the worst of the fourth wave.

"The focus, I think, needs to move away fromwhat we should have done, to what we need to do in order to make certain that we don't have a fifth wave here in the province and figuring out ways to allow our health-care system to slowly get back to normal," he said.

For Wong, that includes continued masking, indoor gathering restrictions, tighter vaccine mandates with no negative testing options for non-essential activities, better ventilation in public settings and an aggressive rollout of third-dose booster shots and vaccines for children.

Wong said he's been focusing more on encouraging vaccines and countering misinformation.

"That's going to be our ticket to making certain that we don't have a fifth wave that devastates us the way this fourth wave did. Hopefully that's the worst it'll ever be, forever," he said.