Manitoba to ramp up health services as COVID-19 modelling trends down

Manitoba health-care workers redeployed amid the pandemic will soon return to their normal jobs to ramp up health services as COVID-19 modelling shows the fourth wave's peak is behind us.

On Thursday, the province said more than 500 health-care staff had been redeployed across the province for COVID-related services. Now public health leaders have announced a phased approach to bring them back to their normal jobs and increase capacity for non-COVID services, including surgical and diagnostic procedures and outpatient services.

"We continue to see positive signs across the health-care system as the Omicron wave recedes," said David Matear, the health system co-lead of Manitoba's Unified Health Sector Incident Command.

"While hospitals remain busy and hundreds of health-care workers continue to be deployed to support COVID-related activity, we are seeing a significant improvement in a number of key areas."

New modelling data which was released on Thursday shows COVID-19 hospital and ICU admissions have peaked and are trending down.

Winnipeg COVID-19 wastewater surveillance data from the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases also shows the peak of the fourth wave of the pandemic is behind us.

The data shows the concentration of COVID-19 N1 and N2 genes in wastewater samples.

(Source: National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases)

 

Matear said the number of COVID-19 positive patients in ICU has dropped by almost 16 per cent in the past week, with 32 patients in ICU as of Thursday morning.

Matear said the return of the workers who have been redeployed will begin in the coming weeks and will occur in phases. The plan will prioritize some of these workers to ensure the most urgent services resume first.

"We'll probably prioritize the most complex and major surgeries for example, ahead of other services and programs that will be restored," he said, adding the details of the plan are still being worked on.

An estimate from Doctors Manitoba shows the surgical and diagnostic backlog in Manitoba currently sits at more than 161,500 procedures as of Feb. 17. This is an increase of more than 7,700 procedures compared to the previous month.

READ MORE: Manitoba's diagnostic and surgical backlog has grown to more than 161,000 cases

Health Minister Audrey Gordon said the diagnostic and surgical recovery task force is working on a plan to address the backlog. She said the province is in the process of awarding an RFP to create a waitlist management system to identify the true number of backlogged diagnostic and surgical procedures.

She said an agreement with Sanford Health in Fargo has been signed. The agreement was first announced in January and would see some patients sent to North Dakota to help alleviate a surgical and diagnostic backlog in the province.

Gordon said the province is still working with Sanford Health officials to design a pilot phase for the agreement to move forward.

Matear said the health system is also working to systematically reduce the number of critical care beds. The pre-pandemic ICU was 72 beds, but amid the pandemic, it was increased to 124 beds where it currently remains.

He said even though the province is scaling down critical care capacity, it is unlikely ICU capacity would go back down to the pre-pandemic levels.

"At the moment Shared Health is actually looking at precisely that, what that definitive number of baseline critical care beds should look like," he said.

"We have the ability at any time to start to reverse that plan to scale up critical care if required."

He said for the immediate future, the health system's focus will be on maintaining capacity and supporting recovery.

He said earlier this week, the health system began the first phase of loosening visitor restrictions at hospitals and personal care homes. However, he said not everything will be back to normal.

He said while proof of vaccination will no longer be a requirement for visitors, health-care facilities will continue to screen staff and visitors, medical masks will still be a requirement and physical distancing will need to be followed.