Toronto hospitals brace for the worst, add tents to accommodate third wave surge
Posted April 16, 2021 6:26 am.
Last Updated April 16, 2021 8:57 am.
More Toronto hospitals are bracing for impact as infection rates continue to spiral out of control.
The Toronto Western Hospital and Toronto General Hospital, both part of the University Health Network (UHN), are setting up large tents to serve as additional patient waiting areas to help reduce crowding in their emergency departments.
The deputy medical director of emergency departments at UHN says at this point, there are just too many people coming in.
“These tents will provide waiting space to help patients physically distance because we are now not able to do that in our ER,” said Dr. Erin O’Connor to the Star.
The tent adjacent to Toronto Western started going up on Thursday, while the Toronto Star is reporting that the Toronto General tent is expected to be put up on Saturday, with both to be operational next week.
It reportedly marks the first time UHN has ever needed to build tents for patients awaiting emergency care.
Tents being set up outside Toronto Western/Toronto General Hospitals to help ease crowding in ER waiting rooms. Staff say lots of Covid patients coming in & they need more space. The field hospital set up at Sunnybrook Hospital will reportedly start accepting patients next week pic.twitter.com/RBqQUzsXXI
— carl hanstke (@carlCityNews) April 16, 2021
The Star also reports the field hospital at Sunnybrook Hospital will begin accepting patients next week.
A source tells the paper the hospital was asked by the Ministry of Health to be ready to go for Monday – however, that could be delayed if there isn’t enough staff available.
The field hospital has been set up in a parking lot at the site and is one of two in the province designed to help address growing capacity challenges.
The province says the temporary beds will provide increased capacity to the health system as a whole by freeing up acute and critical care capacity within hospitals.
The government says it will also help expand capacity by allowing the hospitals to transfer non-critical care patients to these general medicine beds.
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The number of patients flooding into GTA hospitals continues to grow with staff and resources being shuffled and patients being moved to deal with the demand.
Doctors say they are not only seeing more patients during the third wave, but many are showing up with much more severe symptoms of the virus.
There are now 1,932 people hospitalized in the province due to COVID-19 with 659 in the ICU. Both numbers are records since the start of the pandemic.
With files from the Canadian Press
