HSC says unprecedented patient load continues into another week

HSC’s Children’s Section Head of Pediatric Medicine Dr. Elisabete Doyle met with media for a second consecutive week to share details on HSC’s unprecedented patient load.

Dr. Doyle says they saw 174 patient visits to the emergency department Monday, with a monthly average of 171 per day. She says the average was 138 pre-pandemic.

“We’re anticipating a higher peak, and a slow runoff, so our season will last longer,” she explained.

“About half of all patients in the ED right now are Influenza-like illness, so yesterday about 83 of those patients. For the month of November, we saw 140 cases of bronchiolitis total. Three and a half times the number that we saw in November of 2019, bronchiolitis is typically caused by RSV.”

Dr. Doyle says 16 patients were admitted to hospital yesterday, with most seeing treatment and being sent home. Shared Health released a website this past week called Kid Care, which aims to guide parents to the proper physician for their child’s treatment, hopefully taking pressure off the emergency department.

“I would suspect that at least 25 per cent decrease in the number of visits if we could have patients going to the appropriate place for care,” said Dr. Doyle.

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Noelle Drimmie’s first daughter Daisy spent 60 days in HSC’s NICU after being born premature – RSV was a risk then, and it’s even more so now for her 8-week-old daughter Ruby, who has been airlifted to Winnipeg once already.

“We worry about this little one contracting it, and there being less space in hospitals – especially children’s hospitals,” explained Drimmie.

“She ended up spending a week in the NICU with respiratory distress syndrome, she was three weeks early, so RSV was top-of-mind now that it’s more prevalent.”

Drimmie understands that sometimes it’s not possible to seek care for your child anywhere other than in the hospital, but hopes people still do their best to only use it when necessary and use proper masking and health fundamentals to get us through this flu season.

“As much as people want to see the baby, or touch the baby or hold the baby, it’s just not – especially during cold or flu season – the best thing to do.”

Dr. Doyle says the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit currently has 11 patients, with a baseline of nine and 47 patients in the neonatal intensive care unit, with a baseline of 50.