The cancellation of elective surgeries has freed up 371 acute care beds and reduced the critical-care bed occupancy rate to 60 per cent on Vancouver Island, Health Minister Adrian Dix said Saturday.
The cancellations have allowed hospitals to prepare for an increase in the number of COVID-19 patients.
“That’s why we have taken the very, very difficult decision this week of cancelling elective surgery,” Dix said during his daily briefing with provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.
“It had enormous impact everywhere. It had enormous impact on Vancouver Island.”
The government is also asking people for their 100 per cent support in taking the required steps to stop the transmission of the disease, Dix said.
“We are making significant changes in the health- care system, but we still have to take care of lots of people who are dealing with lots of other things and continue to need intervention in urgent matters,” he said.
“The ability of us to respond to this will depend on our collective efforts, our 100 per cent efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19. That responsibility is collective and it’s also individual on everybody on Vancouver Island and everywhere else.”
Island Health says it has plans in place to monitor and respond to COVID-19 and is working in partnership with the Ministry of Health and the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
Island Health has 96 intensive care unit beds and 140 ventilators, including 22 transport ventilators used in ambulances, helicopters and airplanes.
“Our current ventilator capacity is being monitored and evaluated to meet needs, as necessary,” says a statement from Island Health.
“Each of our hospitals has a pandemic plan, which includes identifying where patients would be grouped according to their illness, if required. Each site with an intensive-care unit has plans in place within the site pandemic plan.”
The health authority noted that the majority of people with a respiratory illness do not require hospital care and can recover at home.
The small number who require hospitalization can be treated in medical, acute care and intensive- care units in a number of hospitals, the statement says.
The provincial health officer was asked about a recent Globe and Mail article quoting Dr. Michael Kenyon, head of ICU at Nanaimo Regional Hospital, and his concerns about a shortage of ventilators.
In the article, Kenyon says he worries about having to make the kind of choices doctors in Italy are making, namely which critical-care patients to save.
“I find that very upsetting as well because we have a provincial strategy for ventilators,” Henry said. “There are ventilators on Vancouver Island and we have other ones coming in.
“But no single physician will have to make those decisions in isolation.
“We have an ethical framework and we have a provincial framework that supports how those decisions might be made, if and when they are ever necessary.”
Planning is in place to support each facility in the province to make sure the health ministry can direct care to where people need it, Henry said.
“So this is not something that an individual physician will have to do on their own,” she said. “These are terribly distressing decisions and I think it’s a reflection of the concern and what we’re seeing around the world that puts us in moral distress.”
An ethical framework was created during the H1N1 pandemic and developed during the Ebola response.
“It is in place now in the province so none of us individually have to make those really terrible decisions without having an ethical framework to support us,” Henry said.
“And I am hopeful, with everything we are doing, it will never come to that.”
