As the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Ontario hits record highs, the London Health Sciences Centre is preparing for an influx of patients.
Seven additional critical care beds have been opened up at the request of the Ontario COVID-19 Critical Care Command Table, aimed at assisting with the "extraordinary demand anticipated within the broader health-care system over the coming weeks,"according to a news release.
Those seven beds are in addition to 18 beds that were previously announced. The beds will only open if they're needed. Three of the beds will be in the Children’s Hospital Paediatric Critical Care Unit and will be used to accommodate adult patients.
"Any patients that we'd put in our paediatric critical care unit would not have COVID," LHSC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Adam Dukelow told Blackburn News, "With that in mind, I anticipate they'd likely be patients from the London area who require intensive care, but who do not have COVID. What I can say is they will not be COVID patients."
If those beds are needed to treat children, hospital officials say the adult patients would be removed from the unit safely.
“The situation in Ontario is evolving, which demands that we plan for all potential scenarios to ensure we have the capacity to respond if the need materializes,” said Dr. Jackie Schleifer Taylor, the Interim President and CEO at LHSC and Children’s Hospital said in a news release.
“We have been very thorough in our approach to considering how we can best leverage our internal resources to both add capacity to the system’s pandemic response as well as ensure we preserve the ability to meet the non-COVID-19 critical care and trauma needs of our community. As we make these planning decisions, the safety of our patients, staff, and physicians remains our core principle,” Schleifer Taylor added.
The LHSC will also be reducing the number of surgical and procedural activities until further notice in an effort to create space in the hospital.
"There is 813 ICU patients with COVID across the province today, which is almost double what the highest number was in wave two," Dukelow said.
Even though the province's seven day rolling average of cases has started to decline, Duklow believes higher hospital capacity will still be needed.
"We anticipate that even when the incident numbers peak, our ICU peak numbers will be ten days to two weeks after that."
"We have not," said Dukelow when asked whether the province has hit its ICU peak yet.
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