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MILLER'S ScottISh BakERy MILLER'S ScottISh BakERy Halton residents need look no further than their own communities to find hospitals under tremen- dous duress: surging num- bers of COVID-19 patients, ICUs at capacity, exhausted doctors and nurses and staff shortages. "The third wave has challenged hospitals like never before," said Cindy McDonell, SVP Clinical Op- erations, Halton Health- care. "This presentation is related to the increase in prevalence of variants of concern. COVID-19 patients in our hospitals today are younger, very sick and many need intensive care. We are seeing many more COVID-19 patients in our ICUs than we did in Wave 1 or Wave 2." At Burlington's Joseph Brant Hospital, capacity has been hovering around 95 per cent and reached full capacity two weeks ago, said Dr. Ian Preyra, Joseph Brant Hospital's chief of staff. "In just two weeks, the number of COVID-19 pa- tients in our care has more than doubled and contin- ues to increase daily. If this upward trend continues, hospitals will be over- whelmed," said Preyra. ICU patients include both Halton and non-Hal- ton patients, COVID and non-COVID patients. All non-urgent surger- ies and procedures have been halted with only on- cology and urgent life-sav- ing procedures being booked, he said. Seven intensive care beds have been added in the past week, bringing the to- tal to 31 beds; with the addi- tion of these beds, JBH has "limited capacity." "In terms of resources, there is a shortage of health-care workers across the province, and we're do- ing our best to provide quality care for our pa- tients with those limited re- sources," said Preyra. Between the three hos- pitals within Halton Healthcare, Milton District Hospital has 10 ICU beds, Oakville Trafalgar Memo- rial Hospital has 24 and Georgetown Hospital has three. As of April 16, four ICU beds were added in an Hal- ton Healthcare acute care unit. "However, our ability to care for patients in these beds is largely dependent on staffing availability," said McDonell. COVID plans and strate- gies to ensure the provision of essential health-care ser- vices to communities in- cludes such things as the building of two internal field hospitals to create ad- ditional capacity, and working with home and community care partners to provide resources and support to care for people in their own homes when possible, said McDonell. The ability of Halton hospitals to accept more pa- tients, including ICU pa- tients, is assessed every day and reported to the GTA In- cident Management Sys- tem, a province-initiated plan which monitors hospi- tal capacity needs in real time, and has the authority to move patients to and from hospitals, said McDo- nell. Halton Healthcare ca- pacity is a fluid situation that changes on a daily ba- sis, she said. The shortage of health- care workers, especially critical-care nurses, is province-wide; both Halton Healthcare and JBH are ac- tively recruiting staff. "The surge in patients presents a challenge with respect to the additional work required and the need to protect and preserve health human resources," said McDonell. "Our teams have done an amazing job of making sure we are able to accept these patients and provide them with the care they re- quire all while ensuring our communities' health- care needs continue to be met." Along with other hospi- tals in Ontario, both Halton Healthcare and JBH have implemented a teams mod- el, or multidisciplinary ap- proach to care delivery. The team composition and size are adjusted de- pending on how sick the pa- tient is and staff availabili- ty, said McDonell. Emergent and urgent care are the priority as elec- tive activities are reduced allowing the redeployment of staff to other areas of the hospital, she said. "We are taking deliber- ate action to maintain our hospital capacity; however, the actions taken by indi- viduals in the community will make the biggest differ- ence. We urge the public to please follow public health guidance," said Preyra. NEWS COVID'S THIRD WAVE PUTTING MASSIVE STRAIN ON AREA HOSPITALS KATHY YANCHUS kyanchus@metroland.com "We are seeing many more COVID-19 patients in our ICUs than we did in Wave 1 or Wave 2." - Cindy McDonell, SVP Clinical Operations, Halton Healthcare