Ontario COVID-19 hospitalizations increase and staffing shortages get worse

As the number of people admitted to Ontario hospitals increases amid record setting COVID-19 cases so too does staffing shortages on the front lines.

Peel Paramedic Services declared a ‘Code Black’ this week in the wake of staffing concerns . 

“There have been times when a Code Black has been declared, which means there is one or fewer ambulances available,” Paramedic Chief Peter Dundas wrote in a statement.

The paramedic service says a number of its paramedics are testing positive for COVID-19, or have to isolate at home due to an exposure.

The agency says its putting a number of measures in place to deal with the staffing shortage. 

"Some measures include expanding the use of rapid antigen testing, redeploying non-union paramedics, and expanding the ability to pick up additional overtime shifts," Dundas said. 

In many cases staff who are on the roads are dealing with an offload delay, which is spending more time waiting with patients at hospitals to be transferred to hospital staff. 

"The hospital don't have as many nurses, they can't staff so we end up waiting with patients," Dave Wakely, President of the Peel Paramedic Union who noted in once instance paramedics stayed with a patient for 12 hours, said.

Hospital's are continuing to grapple with staffing shortages as they experience a surge of both non-COVID-19 and COVID-19 patients. 

Trillium Health partners says 343 staff are off due to COVID-19 and they have redeployed approximately 145 staff members to areas with the highest need across the hospital.

Humber River Hospital is reporting 10 per cent of it's workforce is currently off work due to COVID-19. 

"We've scaled back surgeries to urgent emergency and cancer cases only and that's substantial for us," said Jhanvi Solanki who is the Director of Surgical Services. "We've redeployed our operating room and perioperative staff to inpatient areas and where we have these staffing shortages to support and maintain service delivers right now." 

According to The University Health Network, approximately 550 staff of 17,500 employees are currently isolating after testing positive for the virus. 

"Every day we have about 100 calls about exposures – which do not necessarily result in isolation as Health Services evaluates the exposure," said spokesperson Gillian Howard. "About 90% of the positive cases we see are community-related and when one member of a household is positive, it seems inevitable that all members of the household will become positive."

The Ontario Liberals are calling on the Doug Ford government to bring in the military to help long-term care homes and hospitals struggling amid a surge of COVID-19 cases.

“We believe that it’s so important to pick up the phone and call the prime minister, to reach out to the federal government to seek support and help from Canada’s military to come into Ontario to help deal with the challenges that we have in both nursing homes and hospitals,” Steven Del Duca said Wednesday.

Meantime, nurses continue to advocate for the province to repeal Bill 124 which caps public sector wage increases at one per cent over three years.

"It is more crucial than ever, if you want nurses to work more than they're 40 hours a week you need to pay them," said Emergency Room Nurse Nancy Halupa told CTV News Toronto. "The first and second wave were nothing compared to what's going on now, it's not Covid, it's staffing - there's not enough nurses to take of anybody, let alone covid patients. 

For it's part, the province says it is adding 6,000 more health care workers and staff to the system before the end of March 2022.

The ministry of health says to address the overwhelming challenges it reinstated Directive 2 for hospitals and regulated health professionals, instructing hospitals to pause all non-emergent and non-urgent surgeries and procedures in order to preserve critical care and human resource capacity. 

"While this was not an easy decision, these measures will help preserve and increase hospital bed capacity by making 1200 to 1500 acute/post-acute beds available as needed," said spokesperson Alexandra Hilkene.