The Saskatchewan Health Authority says to date they have been able to manage recent surges of COVID-19 but will need to continue to escalate their response.
The SHA response includes a redeployment plan to support additional staff needed in testing and contact tracing, additional hospital staff, additional long-term care staff, re-designations of hospitals across the province and the increased responsiveness to situations where large numbers of staff are required to self-isolate. The SHA says these surge plans rely primary on highly skilled and trained medical staff that cannot be source solely through the labour market .
SHA CEO, Scott Livingstone, says scaling up on this level is a significant challenge and they will need the public’s help to ensure the province does not face the exponential growth in cases going forward, that would strain their ability to scale up on the timelines required. He says with recent numbers they are likely to see more increased pressure, which has real consequences for COVID response and non-COVID services. Livingstone says when their work load increases quickly they are required to re-deploy staff and disrupt other services. Livingstone says while the average number of contacts is currently slightly lower than in recent weeks, the province certainly needs to decrease the number of positive cases and contacts to get ahead of the virus. Livingstone states they need people to shrink their bubbles, maintain physical distancing, wear a mask and stay home if they are sick.
Even with lower averages from recent updates, the recent spike in COVID-19 cases has doubled the number of active COVID-contacts in the last month, and the Saskatchewan Health Authority says a contact tracing boost is on its way. The current surge plan calls for the SHA to add staffing to enable effective contact tracing to 450 cases per day and possibly more. SHA Emergency Operations Chief, Derek Miller, says they will typically be adding these staff through things like service slowdowns. Other support will come from the supplementary workforce, which will bring in external agencies like the public service commission and federal employees from Statistics Canada. Miller says there are currently over 100 public service commission employees supporting contact tracing and other services in the province. The SHA calculates, based on the latest data on the average number of contacts, 450 cases per day would create 72,000 hours of work for contact tracers over a two-week time span, or an average of more than 5,000 hours per day.
With the five-fold growth in COVID cases in ICUs in the last 30 days, the Saskatchewan Health Authority says province-wide ICU capacity is nearly at 100 per cent. Derek Miller, says right now in Saskatoon there are 35 COVID patients in regular hospital beds in Saskatoon, and only 2 available ICU beds if their conditions deteriorate. Miller states the current percent of ICU capacity being used for COIVD-19 is at 27%, a number that is increasing daily and was only 5% a month ago.
Surging COVID-19 numbers will require the Saskatchewan Health Authority to create approximately 200 more beds during the forecasted peak of the novel coronavirus. Miller, says there are significant ongoing capacity challenges, specifically in Saskatoon with inpatient demand at 105% of daily capacity and ICU daily demand at 126%. Miller says the SHA has plans for a potential surge of 1324 acute COVID-19 patients. He adds that represents 61% of the current state, acute capacity, across the entire system. In order to meet this, Miller says the SHA would need to draw down on elective, non-essential or non-urgent surgeries, and other services to create capacity in existing facilities. He says expanding to field hospitals by redeploying staff from slowed down services will also help the capacity issues. Miller did point out that field hospitals are still a last resort options and will only be opened when all other options are exhausted.
