The COVID-19 case count in local hospitals isn’t falling as quickly as it is in the community, which the local medical officer of health says reflects a greater severity of the virus and its variants.
“It’s a cautionary note for us that this is still a severe disease," Simcoe-Muskoka medical officer of health Dr. Charles Gardner said during a weekly media briefing on Tuesday. "The variants of concern are so much more severe and more likely to hit those at a younger age than was previously the case."
Simcoe-Muskoka hospitals are currently caring for 26 COVID-19 patients. They include one in their 20s, five in their 40s (with three in the intensive care unit), five in their 50s (with two in the ICU), five in their 60s (with three in the ICU), and 10 in their 70s (with one in the ICU).
Although case counts are rapidly dropping both locally and provincially, hospitals continue to be busy.
In fact, Barrie's Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) had its highest total number of patients in the ICU on Monday with 23. Of those, 13 had COVID-related critical illness.
In April, RVH had hit a previous high of 21 patients in the ICU.
Other cases — such as overdoses and bacterial infections that staff in the ICU typically see — have picked up.
The unit had ramped up its capacity earlier in the pandemic from 16 beds to meet the anticipated demand.
Just the same, Dr. Chris Martin, who's chief of critical care at RVH, said one person had to be sent to Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket for treatment.
While there is an improvement in the number of people requiring hospitalization with fewer coming to the hospital, the degree of illness is more severe, requiring longer periods of hospitalization.
“The reason is COVID patients are very sick and they take a long time to get better,” Martin said. “Many of our COVID patients have been on ventilators for weeks and they just take so long to get better.
“We’re still dealing with the residual implications of the peak of the third wave," he added.
Martin points out there is recovery happening among the COVID patients in intensive care.
Even after weeks of being on life support, patients — who are much younger now than those who were in the first wave — can still improve and get out of hospital with a reasonable quality of life, he said.
There is hope that as the case counts drop, that will be reflected in the number of people being hospitalized. While there is an anticipated lag, Ontario’s critical-care system is seeing a decrease.
All that hasn’t afforded overworked medical staff members a break yet as the pandemic continues to demand what Martin calls “super-human efforts” to respond to the illnesses.
“We’re still not out of the woods, but I’m hopeful in the next coming weeks we’ll finally start to move in the ICU and follow suit with what we’re seeing in the community,” he said.
