The University of Saskatchewan's head of emergency medicine says Saskatoon's hospitals are under intense strain.
“We're seeing a lot of patients in the waiting rooms and back hallways,” Dr. James Stempien told CTV News.
Stempien's comments come the same day as the latest update from a team of researchers monitoring the city's wastewater reported a nearly 743 per cent increase in traces of coronavirus.
“When I talk to the ER physicians across the province, Battlefords, Regina, a lot of the different hospitals across the province have similar issues of increased volumes, lots of sick patients and still COVID patients on top of their regular volumes.”
Many of those COVID-19 patients are unvaccianted and present at emergency rooms feeling "quite unwell," he said.
Last week health minister Paul Merriman said there are challenges in Saskatoon, but “overall hospital capacity is still at about 94 per cent” and “ICU capacity is at about 74 per cent so we still have some capacity in hospitals."
Stempien says while hospitals may not be full throughout the province, pressure areas like Saskatoon are “above 100 per cent in terms of their capacity."
“Saskatoon is very full, and again, not only are all the beds full upstairs but the ER beds which are supposed to be for emergency patients presenting are often full of acute patients,” he said.
"There's a lot of pressure on the system."
Fatigue and sickness are making it difficult for healthcare workers to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
“It's like running a marathon and all of a sudden they're moving it and saying, “It's not 42 kilometres, we're actually going to do 50 today,” Stempien said.
“You're mentally prepared for some sort of ending, but that ending is not coming and I think a lot of people are getting stressed, physically and mentally.”
Stempien says it would be beneficial to bring back protections — like wearing face masks in public.
“If we're getting increasing numbers, increasing people sick, and getting to the point where the health care system is unable to manage everything, we may have to change our present plan, which isn't giving those protections to the vulnerable patients that we're seeing showing up in the ER,” he said.
“You can only do waiting-room medicine or back-hall medicine for so long before you get both mentally and physically fatigued.”
