Key Takeaways:
- COVID-19 cases are increasing in hospitals across Canada, which some health officials think will last another month.
- In the last week, Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and the Prairie provinces have all reported increasing virus-related hospitalizations.
- Saskatchewan’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Saqib Shahab, believes the current resurgence will end in the next weeks.
Hospitals throughout Canada are seeing increased COVID-19 patients, which some health officials believe will last another month.
According to the most recent data from the Public Health Agency of Canada, COVID-19-related hospitalizations increased by 18% across Canada between April 4 and April 11 to 6,020 patients needing beds, up from 5,109.
Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and the Prairie provinces have all reported increasing virus-related hospitalizations in the recent week. Critical care admissions have also risen slightly in several regions.
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According to the most recent provincial data, Quebec had 2,220 persons in hospital while Ontario had 1,301. Alberta had 1,053 hospitalizations, Saskatchewan had 403, Manitoba had 158, and Nova Scotia had 59.
Dr. Eddy Lang, department director of emergency medicine for Alberta Health Services in Calgary, said the pandemic in his province is in its sixth wave, fueled by the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron. Still, it isn’t as severe as the first Omicron surge.
“No one in health care supports the ‘let it rip’ attitude,” Lang said Monday, “but in terms of hospitalization capacity, we’re not seeing the same strain on our ICU capacity as we did with (the Delta variant) and we must be able to manage.”
He believes hospitalizations will begin to level off in mid-May, based on wastewater studies and statistics from the United Kingdom.
Dr. Saqib Shahab, Saskatchewan’s chief medical officer of health, predicts that the current comeback will be over in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, he claims that Canadians have “unfinished business” regarding vaccinations.
Shahab previously stated that most hospitalizations in Saskatchewan are caused by those who are still unvaccinated or vulnerable and have not had a booster dose.
This is in line with data from the Public Health Agency, which reveals that as of March 27, people who had received three doses of vaccination accounted for around 10% of hospitalizations across Canada, while the unvaccinated accounted for 61%. About 20% of the patients had received two doses.
“Being fully vaccinated and getting boosted saves you from hospitalization in any age group,” Shahab stated. “COVID-19 isn’t going away, and the majority of us will be exposed to Omicron over time.”
According to Health Canada, people who are vaccinated are greatly protected from severe COVID-19 outcomes, such as hospitalization and death.
It was discovered that unvaccinated people were eight times more likely to end up in the hospital and eleven times more likely to die in March than those who had been completely vaccinated and had had a booster injection.
Source: Global News
