As the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge, New Brunswick’s ICU departments “may be in trouble,” says Horizon Health Network interim chief executive officer Dr. John Dornan.
In a regular board meeting, Dornan warned the ICU capacity was “close the brink,” and that there were only 16 to 18 beds left out of the 98 within the health authority.
Dornan painted a stark picture for the board.
Cases of COVID-19 have hit more than 100 over the last three days, with fatalities occurring on all but one day in the last week. Hospitalizations continue to rise.
As of Oct. 6, Horizon said it had 49 non-COVID patients occupying ICU beds. Another 13 were COVID patients in the ICU, leaving 36 beds available.
Global News has made a request Saturday for updated numbers but those numbers have yet to be updated by the health authority.
“We don’t have a lot of beds,” Dornan said Friday. “We’re close to the brink. What do we do when we reach that? We start to look at post-op recovery areas because those are critical care areas and do we put staff in those areas to help increase our ICU capacity.”
He said it is a challenge but one he felt they could handle.
It was because of that challenge Dornan said they were moving to the red level within the hospitals on Oct. 12, meaning all non-essential services will be greatly reduced or cancelled altogether.
“That’s an indication of how worried we are,” he said. “Our ICUs are at capacity.”
He said the health authority doesn’t just look at beds but also staffing resources, equipment that is available, and he said those are also waning.
“Yes, we are worried. This is one of the reasons we are moving to red to decrease the demand on our resources,” he said.
They are also looking at moving those resources around to make COVID units as non-essential services get removed.
Vitalite Health Network also said its global capacity rate is 91.5 per cent, which is 11.5 per cent above the target capacity.
There are 142 ICU beds provincewide, 44 of which are in the Vitalite. As of Friday, 28 people were hospitalized for COVID-19, 15 in the ICU.
The healthy authority also said 40 employees are out self-isolating due to COVID-19. Vitalite will also move to the red level on Oct. 11.
On Saturday, hospitalizations saw a decrease. It dropped from 58 to 56. As well, ICU admissions dropped by seven, with no reported deaths.