“I want to reassure the people of Ontario that if your child is sick in the province of Ontario, you will get the health care you deserve and need in a timely manner,” Jones said at a morning news conference in Toronto. . Her comments come as a combination of flu, respiratory syncytial virus (commonly known as RSV) and COVID-19 continue to put enormous stress on understaffed hospitals, although there are some early positive signs that the pressure could be easing somewhat. Newly released figures show there are more children in intensive care across Ontario than there are beds available to care for them. As of Thursday, there were 114 pediatric patients requiring intensive care in Ontario — two more than there were beds available. This is down from a high of 122 a week ago.
Children are “struggling to breathe,” MPP says
Jones said before the fall respiratory virus season, Ontario Health and hospitals developed capacity plans. He also said that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of pediatric intensive care beds in the province has increased by almost 30 percent. She admitted that some hospitals are “doing things a bit differently” as they try to cope with an influx of children seeking care, but said she was proud of the “innovation that is happening” and the continued collaboration between health networks. WATCHES | SickKids under pressure from respiratory diseases:
Stress and burnout inside Canada’s largest children’s hospital
CBC News has rare access inside Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children as staff try to keep up with the increase in seriously ill children with respiratory illnesses. At Queen’s Park Thursday, Joel Harden, NDP MPP for Ottawa Centre, criticized the government for its stance as well as Bill 124, which caps raises for public sector workers. Harden told the Legislature that he is married to a health professional at CHEO who works with children who are “struggling to breathe.” “It’s one thing to ask first responders and health care workers to sacrifice what they have to sign up to do every day … but then it’s another thing to tell us a story about how there isn’t a major problem here and how we’re investing more money than ever,” Harden said. “Because it doesn’t reflect the reality of the nurse or the doctor or the orderly or the guardian holding the mom’s hand with the breathing tube in their child’s face.”
Bring back mask orders now, says expert
The number of infants and children up to four years old going to hospital emergency departments with respiratory problems remains more than double the pre-pandemic average, according to Ontario’s Acute Care Enhanced Surveillance (ACES). database. The database tracks daily visits and admissions for respiratory diseases, covering every major hospital in the province. For those aged five to 17, it is almost three times the seasonal average before the pandemic. That said, both figures have seen a decline over the past week. Dr. Anna Banerji, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto’s Temerty School of Medicine, says governments across Canada need to take action, starting with mask mandates. Governments need to step up and implement mask mandates, says Dr. Anna Banerjee, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto’s Temerty School of Medicine and Dalla Lana School of Public Health. (CBC) “We have a crisis right now,” he said. “RSV season is starting, flu season is starting and we have ICUs at max capacity.” Banerji cited a recent example at the Ottawa Children’s Hospital, CHEO, where seven children had to be resuscitated over the course of two days. “What we need to do is to enforce masks, especially for children in school. Everyone is afraid to touch the mask orders, but we are talking about the children entering the ICU.” From a peak of 1,134 on 9 November, the seven-day average of children aged five to 17 presenting to hospital with respiratory symptoms fell to 824 on 16 November. The drop for newborns to four-year-olds was less sharp, with the seven-day average falling to 1,110 from a peak of 1,263 on November 11. Jones said Thursday morning that the province appears to be seeing a slowdown in the rate of increase in children seeking hospital care for respiratory symptoms. “I’m not going to assume this means we’re reaching a plateau, but we’re seeing a slowing of the percentage increase,” he told reporters, adding that the majority of pediatric ICU patients are there because of RSV. Meanwhile, Ontario reported another 105 deaths of people with COVID-19 in the past seven days, up from 138 the previous week. Only two children in intensive care have COVID-19. Test positivity also fell slightly on Thursday to 10.7 percent from 11.5 percent at the same time last week. Positive rates can vary depending on how many people are tested for the virus. Last January, the province moved to limit PCR testing to only high-risk populations and settings. The number of people hospitalized with the virus fell from 1,722 last Wednesday to 1,390, but ICU admissions remain about the same as last week, at 54 out of 55.
