Hamilton hospitals provide few details on plans for surge in COVID-19 patients

Provincial health officials warn a coming surge in COVID-19 patients could soon overwhelm Ontario's ICU capacity, but it's still not clear what exactly Hamilton's hospitals are doing to prepare.

While Joseph Brant Hospital has undertaken the expedited construction of a 93-bed pandemic unit, Hamilton's healthcare providers have been vague about their surge plans so far.

There are currently 410 available ICU beds in Ontario for COVID-19 patients, in addition to the beds that are currently filled with patients, health officials said Friday.

The province is also planning to add 900 additional ICU beds for COVID-19 patients in the coming weeks.

But even then, Ontario's need for ICU beds could surpass its demand by April 14, according to the province's worst-case scenario projection.

St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton and Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) have cut back on elective surgeries and discharged patients whenever possible.

Both, however, have remained unspecific about what new surge spaces would look like or where they would be located.

St. Joe's previously told CBC it's designing COVID-19 units within the hospital and looking at "non-traditional spaces" outside of the hospital setting, without explaining what that means or would look like.

It's been an "enormous task" but staff have opened up 200 beds so far.

"Lots of details on our surge plan are still being finalized," said St. Joe's spokesperson Maria Hayes Friday, promising more details next week.

One aspect she was able to discuss was plans to create more medical beds by moving acute mental health units at the Charlton campus over to the hospital at West 5th where the majority of mental health and addictions patients are already cared for.

"We are creating the space at West 5th by temporarily combining an area of units where space allows," she said, explaining more movement is expected happen as planning around COVID-19 continues.

Over at HHS "everything is on the table," including using non-patient areas of hospitals and unspecified community locations as a last resort, said a spokesperson, adding they've found 350 beds for those with COVID-19 and expect to create more.

"We are doing everything possible to ensure that we are ready," wrote Lillian Badzioch in an email Friday evening.

She said HHS's planning anticipates five "waves" of escalation and the city is still only in wave one. The hospital is negotiating ways to create hospital capacity in places such as hotels said Badzioch, who also said she should be able to provide more information next week.

Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, Hamilton's medical officer of health, was also unable to provide any details of the hospitals' plans.

"I don't have anything in particular about the numbers of beds or where they are," she said during a daily media update.

Richardson did say she knows the hospitals are "working very hard" finding acute beds, making sure people can get care in the community and opening up ICU space.

Provincial death projections 'daunting'

Provincial health officials said Friday that the pandemic could last 18 months to two years. 

Had Ontario done nothing, deaths could have reached nearly 100,000, according to their models. But, with the actions the government has taken, the projected outcome is between 3,000 and 15,000 deaths.

"This is such an unprecedented scenario. It's a bad movie getting worse."said Mayor Fred Eisenberger, who described the numbers as "stunning" and "daunting."

Some cities, such as Toronto and Windsor, have provided local breakdowns of the provincial data.

But Richardson said public health officials in Hamilton only have the provincial projections, so she was not able to say what they could mean for the the city specifically.

A team of people from the hospitals, public health and McMaster are now working with the numbers.

"These are all just really good models that are put together by mathematicians, so they take a little bit of time to understand where we're each landing at," said Richardson.

She added those people will be working on refining the local models and she hopes to provide more information about their findings next week.

Hamilton had 138 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus as of noon Friday. Forty-five cases have been resolved.

Richardson said in the last 10 days 44 per cent of the city's cases were due to community spread — a jump from the 24 per cent before that period.

Two people — both residents of Heritage Green Nursing Home in Stoney Creek — have died from the virus.