Doctor confident children’s hospital can push through mass patient influx

Winnipeg’s Children’s Hospital continues to see double the patients it was designed for, but the head of pediatric medicine says she’s confident they can handle it.

The hospital is seeing nearly 200 patients a day when a normal respiratory virus season would be around 135.

“We’re oscillating somewhere between 175 to 200, that’s a large amount of kids for us,” says Dr. Elisabete Doyle, Section Head of Pediatric Medicine at the children’s hospital. “The fact that we’re seeing 175 to 200 is a real stretch for us.”

“The reason for the high traffic in children’s emergency is the high viral burden in the community, although we are still seeing some COVID, the main players right now are RSV and influenza A.”

Dr. Doyle says normally, 60 per cent of children who attend the emergency department are less-acute patients, while 40 per cent need urgent care. She says now that number is flipped.

“Many children are testing positive for more than one of these viruses, and roughly half of all of the patients arriving in children’s ED are experiencing influenza-like symptoms.”

Manitoba is following Australia’s flu season closely as a measure of what it will be like here and Dr. Doyle is preparing for a higher influx of patients.

“They started their season earlier than normal, hit a higher peak than normal, and influenza lasted longer than normal so they had a particularly bad season, we’re anticipating something similar here,” Dr. Doyle explained.

Dr. Doyle says there are eight patients in the pediatric ICU and 50 patients in the neonatal ICU. 182 patients visited the children’s emergency department on Monday. 34 patients were hospitalized with RSV in November, 22 of those in the last week.

“We’re definitely feeling the crunch, maybe not to the same intensity that they are feeling it in the pediatric hospitals but we’re starting to feel it,” said Dr. Philippe Lagace-Weins, a medical microbiologist at St. Boniface Hospital.

Dr. Lagace-Weins says they have emergency rooms that are full, but there are steps the community can take to lower the burden on all hospitals.

He and Dr. Doyle say it’s important to get vaccinated against the flu, wash your hands, clean high-touch surfaces and cough into your elbow. Adding that Manitobans should keep kids home from daycare or school if they’re sick to help ease the viral burden in the community. Both doctors also recommend wearing masks in public settings.

“Do what we did for our elderly grandparents – for the kids that are suffering now. We did it for them, we should be able to do it for the kids in the community too.”

Dr. Doyle says this season will be challenging but is confident in the children’s hospital’s ability to find solutions.