Number of hospitalized COVID patients low overall, but severity of infection still high

New Brunswick's chief medical officer of health has made it clear that one of the triggers for locking down the province again and moving it back to red is reduced hospital capacity, including an increased number of people in intensive care.

Since the pandemic arrived in New Brunswick, 47 COVID patients have gone into hospital. Three people have gone into intensive care during the recent spike.

The numbers may seem low, but Brenda Coleman, clinical scientist at Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto, says they're not exceptional.

While the province has seen fewer than 50 COVID patients in hospital since the beginning of the pandemic, its hospitalization rate is just as bad, if not a little worse, than Ontario's.

"Probably the best comparison at the moment is actually Ontario, which sounds a little bit funny, but we are actually fairly close to you in the population density because we have such a large northern section of the province that doesn't have a lot of people in it," Coleman said.

She said extracting numbers of cases and numbers of hospitalizations to percentages and per million population makes it so "we can talk apples to apples" when comparing the provinces.

Coleman looked at the number of cases, the number of tests and how large the population is. What she's found was the following: Looking at per million people, the number of cases in New Brunswick is "substantially lower" than Ontario.

But the number of people hospitalized per hundred cases is "very similar."

New Brunswick has a six per cent hospitalization rate, while Ontario has a five per cent hospitalization rate. 

"It seems that the severity is fairly close," Coleman said.

She said Ontario is doing more testing than New Brunswick on a per capita basis.

Horizon Health Network has seen around 14 COVID patients in its hospitals since the pandemic was declared in early 2020, and 10 had to go into the ICU. 

"The most COVID patients we have treated at a given time has been two," said Geri Geldart, Horizon's vice-president of clinical services.

Vitalité Health Network has provided care to about 26 patients with COVID-19, 15 of whom were admitted to an ICU.

Both health authorities said this number is quite low and hospitals haven't been overwhelmed by patients.

"For the moment, this situation has had very little impact on patient services," said Vitalité president and CEO Dr. France Desrosiers. "But it continues to be a constant concern in a context of staff shortages in several sectors."

Geldart said this situation can change at any time.

"Because of this we remain on high alert," Geldart said.

There's always a lag time of three weeks to a month before ICUs get slammed.- Brenda Coleman, epidemiologist.

As of Jan. 10, 25 health care workers for Vitalité Health Network are self isolating because of COVID exposure: six in Zone 1, nine in Zone 4 and 10 in zone .

As of Jan. 11, 49 Horizon workers were self isolating. Seven in Miramichi, 17 in Fredericton, 16 in Moncton and nine in Saint John.

Dr. Jennifer Russell said the epidemiology team and the medical officers of health are monitoring the case count and other factors on a daily basis. She said the biggest factor when deciding whether lockdown is necessary is hospital capacity. Outbreaks in nursing homes mean more hospitalizations are possible, Russell said.

"That's probably the most important thing that we're going to be monitoring at this point in time," she said.

Geldart said Horizon has established a plan to increase the number of beds that are staffed in case of a large jump in hospitalized patients.

"This would likely require other services to be restricted so that staff could be redeployed to support the expansion," she said. 

Lower death rates?

The number of deaths in New Brunswick, on the other hand, is substantially lower than other provinces, Coleman said. New Brunswick has 12, while Ontario has more than 5,000.

"The number of deaths per thousand people who are identified is almost double in Ontario compared to New Brunswick," she said. 

Coleman said this could be because New Brunswick is doing a better job at keeping cases out of long-term care homes. However, since the province is still in the midst of a spike, it's very possible this could change in the coming weeks, she said.

"There's always a lag time of three weeks to a month before ICUs get slammed," she said. "For the province, [there's] a lot of new cases for you, all very quickly."

Russell said if people continue following the orange rules, a return to the yellow phase is also possible.

"We have moved out of red and orange levels over and over again since March, and we've done this by working collaboratively," she said.

The latest figures from the province show 256 active cases of the disease in New Brunswick, four people in hospital and one person in an ICU.