TORONTO -- A team of nine healthcare workers from Newfoundland and Labrador have arrived in Toronto to help treat COVID-19 patients in some of the city’s hardest hit hospitals.
The group, which includes the wife of Newfoundland Premier Andrew Furey, touched down at Pearson International Airport in a Canadian Forces Hercules aircraft early Tuesday afternoon.
They are the first reinforcements to arrive in Ontario since the province issued a call for more than 600 healthcare professionals nearly two weeks ago.
The Canadian Armed Forces also plans to deploy nine ICU nurses and up to three multipurpose medical assistance teams in the province, though it is unclear when they will arrive.
“We’re ready to go to work. Honestly, that was our intent for coming up here, to join the teams within University Health Network and the critical care units and on the COVID floors. We're ready to get orientated, to get to know the nurses and physicians and the other interdisciplinary team members and get to work and hopefully relieve some of these healthcare providers that have been working tirelessly over the past year,” Critical Care Nurse Practitioner Jennifer Hanks told reporters upon arrival.
The number of COVID patients in intensive care units in Ontario has more than doubled over the last month and now stands at 875.
Ontario has ordered all hospitals to cease all elective and non-emergent procedures in an attempt to free up capacity but with COVID patients now taking up roughly one out of three available beds in intensive care units concerns are building that healthcare workers will eventually have to make impossible decisions about who to provide the highest level of care to.
Meanwhile a temporary field hospital that was set up on the grounds of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre earlier this month has begun accepting patient transfers
“I’m very grateful, very thankful that these health care providers from Newfoundland have agreed to volunteer to help us out here in Ontario with the difficult situation we’re having right now, especially with our ICUs,” Robin Martin, the Parliamentary Assistant to Health Minister Christine Elliott, told reporters after formally welcoming the team to Ontario. “We are just so grateful for their help and grateful that they are willing to come and to assist us.”
Photos courtesy of Tom Podolec.
