Staff shortages impacting eastern Ontario hospitals

On any given day in April at the Pembroke Regional Hospital, 60 to 80 staff are forced to stay home due to the new COVID-19 BA.2 variant.

That is about 10 per cent of the hospital's workforce, according to Pembroke Regional Hospital President and CEO Pierre Noel. He says the latest COVID-19 variant is more transmissible than any other seen during this pandemic.

"Our staff, who are living within our community and interacting within our community, are contracting the virus at a higher rate than in any other wave," Noel tells CTV News Ottawa.

It's an issue that is affecting hospitals across eastern Ontario.

On Wednesday at CHEO, 162 staff were out due to COVID. On Monday, the number of affected staff was 191.

CHEO says on any given day they could be missing 10-15 per cent of their 1,200-member workforce.

The Ottawa Hospital bargaining president of the Ontario Nurses Association says there were 450 staff off at the Ottawa Hospital and another 25 at the Ottawa Heart Institute.

"We were already in a staffing crisis. This is just exaggerating it," registered nurse Rachel Muir said. "If it continues, we are then going to have to once again cancel surgeries and go back to doing the emergency and urgent cases while the elective and non-urgent cases...are again going to be put on the waitlist."

At the Brockville General Hospital, 44 staff members were absent due to COVID Wednesday; 50 were home on Monday. Roughly, 900 people are employed at the hospital along the seaway.

"Our staff are not immune to catching COVID, right? Because they are part of the community and right now we have approximately 50 staff that are off because of either a high-risk contact or actually testing positive for COVID," said BGH President and CEO Nicholas Vlacholias on Monday, speaking to Brockville's Move 104.9.

"So maintaining our services is going to be difficult for us."

Compounding the matter says Noel, is the isolation requirements for hospital workers. Anyone who works in a high-risk setting is required to isolate for 10 days upon showing COVID symptoms. People who are fully vaccinated and do not work in a high-risk setting must only isolate for five days.

In Pembroke, Noel says staff are being redeployed to other areas in the hospital to meet critical needs during shortages.

"Our operating room staff are being redeployed to our emergency department or to our ICU, and are needing to defer any non-urgent surgeries."

Emergency Department manager Kaley Lapierre is one of those employees. She's worked at PRH for five years, and managed the emergency department for one year. But over the last three weeks she's said she has had to step back into her scrubs to fill the gaps.

"It is definitely stressful, the unknown," Lapierre tells CTV News. "But at the end of the day my mentality is that I'm here for the patient and the community."

The mother of two says she has not had much of a personal life during the pandemic, with the threat of missing work constantly looming.

"That is always on the back of my mind; what would be the consequence if I wasn't able to step in as the last resort?"

PRH says they have been able to bring in some nursing help from outside the region, but ultimately must ride out this sixth wave.

"I don't see a solution for it at this time," says Lapierre.

"Clearly, we have to ride out the current COVID-19 circumstances," says Noel, "but we also have to look as a system, how to ensure we have the right number of people in the right place."

- with files from Natalie van Rooy, CTV News Ottawa