‘We should be peaking soon’: Ottawa doctor says worst of the sixth wave should be over soon

As a surging sixth wave of COVID-19 looks to level off, there are warnings of a difficult week ahead for Ontario hospitals.

The province’s medical experts anticipate seeing more critical cases of the virus that could start filling up beds in the ICU before numbers start to come back down.

Ontario health officials say it’s expected that the province will hit the sixth wave peak very soon.

“You do see an increase in hospitalizations which is around 7 to 10 days, after you see an increase in cases,” said Zahid Butt, an epidemiologist.

Optimism is now on the horizon in Ottawa, for cases to soon level off.

“We should be peaking soon, if not already,” said Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, a critical care and palliative doctor at the Ottawa Hospital. “When it comes to volume of admissions for COVID patients, it’s no where near where it’s been for previous waves.”

Cases remain stable in the nation’s capital, where staffing in hospitals remains the biggest challenge.

“With the high community spread, health care providers are becoming positive and the isolation period are longer for health care providers, which is up to 10 days,” said Dr. Kyeremanteng.

That crunch is also felt at Montfort Hospital, where 69 staff members were isolating because of COVID as of Thursday. The staffing challenge is causing non-emergency surgery delays.

“Community transmission also translates to transmission amongst health care workers and this means that we have more health care workers knocked out from COVID and this is on top of already considerable burn out,” said Dr. Peter Juni, Scientific Director of Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.

Kyeremanteng said from a physician’s point of view, it means a lot of back up schedules as the hospital adjusts to staff member absences.

Meanwhile, officials say admissions for COVID patients during the sixth wave is no where near the numbers from previous waves of the pandemic.