'Our critical care services are failing': Manitoba doctors call for military aid, health order enforcement over the holidays

A letter written by a Manitoba doctor is calling on the province to do more to reduce the strain on hospitals and intensive care units from COVID-19.

Obtained by CTV News on Monday, the letter, penned by Dr. Dan Roberts and signed by several ER doctors, demands the province bring in help from the Canadian Armed Forces to maintain ICU capacity and to strictly enforce public health orders.

“Our critical care services are failing,” the letter reads. “We will once again have to fly out ventilated patients to other provinces. Meanwhile we cannibalize essential services to maintain ICU capacity.”

The letter adds the current surgical backlog, which is estimated at 152,000 procedures, has grown to levels unimaginable before the pandemic.

"There is no acknowledgement of the preventable tragedies that will unfold,” the letter reads. "Thousands wait anxiously at home, hoping that their aneurysm will not rupture before surgery, that their cancers will be diagnosed and treated before they become terminal, or that their multiple sclerosis will be evaluated and treated before they lose mobility and independence.”

The doctors said ICU staffing levels are being impacted as nurses leave and burnout is occurring, adding ICU capacity expansion is not possible right now.

“If poor access to vital health services is to continue, we can expect many more deaths than those caused directly by COVID-19,” the letter says.

“We know the impact of our strategies and they have to be changed,” said Roberts said in an interview with CTV News Winnipeg.

“We need help. We need to call armed forces now to provide some relief so that we can maintain ICU capacity but also to allow us to redeploy nurses and technologists back to their base services.”

Dr. Roberts said cardiac surgeries cannot keep getting canceled and people need access to diagnostic procedures like endoscopies so tumors and be diagnosed.

“We can’t keep people away from clinics who really need assessment and care,” he said.

Dr. Charles Bernstein, a gastroenterologist who also signed the open letter, told CTV News he was going to see a patient today who had precancerous lesions in his colon who had his endoscopies cancelled twice.

“He now has rectal cancer,” Dr. Bernstein said.

He said the more immediate life-and-death situations, like cardiac care, have been well documented.

“This is a very, very, big problem. The longer COVID occupies our hospital beds and our most expensive resources, the worse it’s going to be,” he said. "We wouldn’t have as big of a COVID problem if everyone was vaccinated because even though there’s breakthrough cases amongst the doubly vaccinated, they’re at most sick at home mostly.”

“The people who are critically ill are incompletely or are not vaccinated.”

The doctors want the province to work on reducing the number of cases by strictly enforcing public health orders, especially in under-vaccinated communities.

They also want rapid COVID-19 testing made widely available to schools and businesses and holiday gatherings restricted to family members only.

The letter also calls for assistance from The Canadian Armed Forces to work in ICUs.

Wab Kinew, leader of the Manitoba NDP, said Monday this same group of doctors had spoken out previously ahead of the third wave, and a short time later many Manitoba ICU patients were sent out of the province for care.

“So this is a warning that we have to take very, very seriously,” he said. “That’s why today we are lending our support to their calls and in particular asking that the government of Manitoba ask the federal government for the military to be deployed here,” Kinew said.

Kinew pointed out the request for military help needs to come from the Premier’s office.

“And if those physicians on the front lines are saying that we need this assistance now, then those at the political level who are overseeing the health-care system have to take action immediately,” Kinew said.

He said both short-term and long-term solutions are needed to address the staffing crisis in health-care and that people are continually expressing their concerns to the NDP about the state of the province’s health-care system.

“It tells us that we need to take action now and calling in the military, asking for help so that Manitobans can stay healthy, is one of those steps that is required at this time.”

In a statement, Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont backed the call by doctors to do more during the fourth wave.

“We need free rapid tests, more vaccinations in long-term care, solid enforcement of public health orders, and if it takes the military to expand our surgical capacity, that is what needs to happen,” he said in a statement. “We all have a role to play in fighting this pandemic and there are people who aren’t pulling their weight, including the people in charge.”