“Everything is on fire around us. The Barrie is on fire. Don’t pour oil on the flames by meeting at Christmas,” says Dr. Catherine Bélanger, the COVID-19 coordinator for the Haut- Saint-Laurent local health network (LHN), in an attempt to convey how serious the situation is becoming across Quebec and even here in the Valley, as the Barrie Memorial Hospital is now struggling to contain a growing number of cases.
“The outbreak is not over. There have been patients and employees testing positive in the last few days, so it is still active,” says Bélanger.
But while people at the Barrie are still falling ill, she says, “It is not a sign that infection control measures are not working.” The long incubation period and the fact that people are contagious for up to two days before the onset of symptoms mean the new cases could still be due to the original patient zero at the hospital. The Barrie Memorial is not under lockdown, but the third floor is operating on a “highly need-to-be-there basis.”
With cases still arising, it will be a minimum of several weeks before the outbreak will be considered contained and then over. All patients who test positive are moved as quickly as possible to the COVID-19 ward at the Anna Laberge Hospital in Châteauguay. Hospital employees can return to work after 10 days, provided they are symptom-free at that time. The outbreak has complicated staffing, Bélanger points out, as the Barrie was already shortstaffed for managing something like this.
The outbreak is not necessarily being reflected in the local statistics of weekly case counts being posted by the regional health authority, since many of the patients and employees who have been affected by the outbreak do not live in the area. It is, however, being reflected in the overall increase in cases in the Montérégie, which reported 2,064 active cases as of Dec. 13. According to the Institut national de santé publique du Québec, there were 27 active cases in the Haut-Saint-Laurent LHN, 32 in the Suroît LHN, 161 in the Vaudreuil- Soulanges LHN, and 342 in the Jardins-Roussillon LHN.
Dr. Bélanger confirms that the hospitals are starting to fill, and they are now seeing the creation of nontraditional sites and mini wards in residences to manage the increasing number of cases in the elderly and general population. “We are in emergency mode. It is out of control,” she warns of the virus transmission rates within the province. “The hospital system is showing the strain quite a bit,” she says, adding that doctors and healthcare workers in general are exhausted and getting sick. “There is patient movement in the system to try and relieve some of the pressure,” Bélanger states, but she suggests that those who are not respecting the public health guidelines are now potentially putting healthcare workers and their families at risk.
“Please stay in your homes for Christmas, because it is very serious now,” says Bélanger, while acknowledging that there is the likelihood that people will disregard the recommendations not to gather over the holidays. “Until the vaccines are fully rolled out in the general population, there is still a risk. And the vaccine will not get here fast enough to undo the damage of Christmas.”