A Saanich woman says she was contacted by staff at Royal Jubilee Hospital and asked to come in and feed her 87-year-old mother, because there weren’t enough staff available to do it.
Helen Bell says she got the call at 7:45 a.m. Monday asking if she would be willing to feed her mother her three daily meals due to a staffing shortage. On Monday, the province reported a record 1,048 people in hospital with COVID-19, including 138 in intensive care.
“They said they need family to come in, us to come in, to make sure that she got breakfast, lunch and dinner today… because they are so short-staffed,” said Bell, 61.
Mother Margaret Mears, who goes by Margot, has an antibiotic-caused neuropathy that has left her temporarily unable to use her hands and feet. Mears lived independently in Saanich prior to her hospital admission.
Bell said she and her sister shared the feeding duties on Monday.
With large numbers of people in hospital because of the fast-spreading Omicron variant, and a high number of staff off sick with the virus, Bell said she empathizes with hard-working health-care workers. But if there aren’t enough staff to feed patients, she asked, why is B.C. talking about relaxing public-health restrictions?
“It just doesn’t seem to be the time for provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix to be talking about lessening restrictions when Omicron is bringing the hospital system to its knees,” said Bell.
Henry has signalled that the province could relax restrictions by Family Day, Feb. 21, if daily COVID case counts and hospitalizations continue to fall off, although she said they won’t be dropped entirely, since cases can rebound when restrictions end too quickly.
On Monday, the province reported 4,075 new cases of COVID-19 over the weekend, including 575 in Island Health, bringing the number of active cases on the Island to 1,364.
There were also 19 deaths reported, three in Island Health.
Four acute-care hospitals on the Island have reported COVID outbreaks — Royal Jubilee Hospital, Victoria General Hospital, Nanaimo Regional General Hospital and Cowichan District Hospital.
On Friday, Henry said it looked as if COVID-related hospital admissions had peaked. The number of people in hospital with the virus is expected to peak a week or two later.
Bell said the overcrowding at Royal Jubilee is evident, with two patients being placed in some single rooms.
“They’re just literally shoved in there,” said Bell, adding: “It seems that we need to take Omicron a lot more seriously.”
“It’s not just a mild illness that isn’t having any impact,” said Bell, pointing to the more than 1,000 people with COVID-19 in hospitals around the province. “Those are real people with real families.”
Bell said she understands the need to balance mitigating risks of transmission with the social and economic impact of restrictions, but believes public health and the province are leaning too much in favour of boosting the economy.
“I think the economy is coming ahead of people’s real concerns,” said Bell, noting anyone could end up in hospital for non-COVID-19 reasons and the services or staff may not be there for them.
“I do think if people knew the real impact, maybe they would work a little harder to squash this COVID down so that we don’t have to live like this — without a fully functioning hospital system.”
Dix said Friday that on Thursday, there were 9,231 patients in acute-care hospitals across the province, with an overall inventory of 9,229 base beds and 2,353 surge beds in the system. The high number of hospitalizations presents a “significant challenge,” he said.
Bell said those who choose not to follow public health orders and not to get vaccinated and then end up in hospital are needlessly taking away precious health-care services and resources from the sick and elderly.
She said her mother said “it’s very hard to be in hospital right now.”
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