HHS planning temporary 'last resort' structure for patients during COVID-19 pandemic

Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) is planning to potentially build a temporary, "last resort" structure for patients as variants of concern spread during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A staff memo from Wednesday states its Wellington Street parking lot was selected as a potential site to increase in-patient capacity and provide up to 80 hospital-level beds.

"Operational details are still to be determined, and it is planned to be a provincial resource," the memo said.

"The Wellington Street parking lot was chosen because of its proximity to other HHS facilities, including the Hamilton General Hospital ... the pandemic is an unpredictable crisis and we are working closely with all of our partners at multiple levels to meet the needs of our community and beyond during this time."

This comes as variants of concern continue to appear in local COVID-19 tests.

Hamilton Public Health Services confirmed four local cases of the B117 variant (first seen in the United Kingdom) as of Thursday and has 81 cases it is still trying to confirm.

Structure could be ready for patients by end of April

Sharon Pierson, HHS chief operating officer and executive vice-president of clinical operations, elaborated on the memo during a Thursday town hall meeting, saying HHS was asked to start evaluating the lot for the "place of last resort."

She said it would assist provincial and federal COVID-19 planning.

"If necessary, we anticipate we could have this structure in place by the end of April, but there's a lot of decisions to be made in planning and progress," Pierson said.

She said the facility would be intended for general medicine patients ready for discharge, but there is a possibility that could include COVID-19 patients.

'Significant increase' in cases to come in 2 weeks

Dr. Dominik Mertz, HHS medical director of infection prevention control, said last Thursday that a third wave of COVID-19 is inevitable and Hamilton could re-enter lockdown by the end of March.

This week he said the third wave won't be "significantly worse" than the second wave based on provincial modelling — but more cases are coming.

"Within a week or two, we will start to see a significant increase," Mertz said.

He said most figures remained relatively stable over the last few weeks, but noted a slight uptick in Hamilton's weekly cases per 100,000 people, even when discounting outbreak-related cases.

"The pattern looks quite similar to what we've seen in mid-November to end of November," he said.

Mertz said Hamilton's intensive care unit admissions are higher than the provincial average.

But he also said the city's number of variants of concern is lower than the rest of Ontario.