(Brady Lang/650 CKOM file photo)

By Brent Bosker/CKOM News

COVID-19 surge in Saskatchewan ‘very troubling’: SHA

Sep 9, 2021 | 2:44 PM

A Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) manager says the health-care system is in a “fragile position” at the moment with the tide of new COVID-19 cases showing no sign of slowing down.

“This most recent wave is catching us at a time where we were already experiencing staff shortages in a number of facilities and in programs and now we see this increasing COVID demand, which is very troubling and creating significant pressures in our system,” Derek Miller, chief of emergency operations for the SHA, told Gormley on Thursday.

The COVID caseload in the province has risen dramatically in the past month.

Miller said as the Delta variant makes its way through the province — and primarily hits unvaccinated people — the number of COVID cases has risen by about 400 per cent and the hospitalization rate has increased by nearly 150 per cent.

“The rate of increase is really concerning to us,” Miller said, “as it’s faster than what we saw in earlier waves.”

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He said the main pressure point are the province’s hospitals.

He explained regional and community hospitals are at or near capacity while urban centres like Saskatoon and Regina are running over capacity most days with people waiting to be admitted.

That situation is mirrored inside intensive care units, with 70 of the 79 ICU beds occupied across the province. As of Wednesday, 32 of the beds were people with COVID-19.

“Staffing up to meet that full baseline (number of) beds is an ongoing challenge for us, just given the ongoing impact of the pandemic on our teams, and that has a direct impact on how we’re able to staff those beds,” Miller said.

He noted the SHA and the province have started planning for the impact of further increased hospitalizations.

In previous waves, the SHA was able to move staff members from some units to high-volume COVID areas to handle demand. Then, when COVID cases started to fall, the authority moved staff back to their home units in hopes of returning services to normal.

Miller said those employees likely will move back to COVID units, which could result in limited services.

“The primary lever that we have in order to create capacity is by slowing down services,” Miller said. “We know that this has a direct impact on many Saskatchewan residents who are waiting for care and it’s not something that we take lightly when we do that.

“We are currently working with the Ministry of Health to develop a plan for which slowdowns might be required in order to enable the redeployment of staff into these high-demand COVID service areas.”

That could allow the SHA to address requirements in staffing beds, but also in testing facilities. In recent weeks, testing sites haven’t been able to keep up with demand.

“As we’re seeing increases in demand for testing in various sites, today and tomorrow and going forward, we will be augmenting those teams in spaces in order to ensure that we can meet the demand for testing,” Miller said.