CNN News is reporting that the government of Ontario requested medical and other support as help from the federal government as ICU admissions hit new highs Monday.
“We have approved a request for assistance from Ontario to provide support to their provincial healthcare system against COVID19,” Bill Blair, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, said on Twitter. “@CanadianForces will provide medical + civilian human health resources within medical care facilities in ON, as well as logistical and admin. support.”
In a statement released on Monday, Canada said it would deploy federal health human resources, provide support from the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), and pay for the redeployment of the Canadian Red Cross to support and relieve staff in medical care facilities.
“The CAF is preparing to deploy up to three multi-purpose medical assistance teams (MMATs), which are scalable healthcare provider teams primarily composed of Nursing Officers and Medical Technicians as well as additional CAF members for general duty support as applicable,” the statement said. “The MMATs will be rotated in and out of the province rather than deployed simultaneously to ensure that CAF support is sustainable.”
Health officials are seeing a few glimmers of sunshine amid the numbers, such as there being two fewer ICU cases today, compared to yesterday, however, the overall number of hospitalizations climbed to 2,336, up from 2,271 the day before, according to CBC Canada.
Ontario is already using “surge capacity” in many of the province’s hospitals, including a few field hospitals – admitting patients with Covid-19 who do not need intensive treatment or those who have recovered enough to be transferred into the field facilities.
Dr. Irfan Dhalla, an internal medicine doctor at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital and a vice-president at Unity Health Toronto says that when a COVID patient improves enough to be moved out of the ICU, they don’t miraculously return home. Many will require weeks or months of hospital care.
“I think there are people out there that have the view that COVID is an acute illness and that either you die or you recover,” he said. “More and more we know that those aren’t the only two options. There will be a substantial proportion of people whose lives are forever changed by COVID.” He adds, “It can take many weeks or months to recover,” notes the National Post.
