6th COVID wave impacting children’s hospitals, doctor says – CTV
April 28, 2022
As Canada’s sixth wave of COVID-19 continues, hospitals caring for the country’s youngest patients are facing both high patient volumes and high levels of staff off sick.
SickKids Emergency Department head, Dr. Jason Fischer at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children says roughly 10 to 30 per cent of staff are off daily since the pandemic hit.
Fischer says that because kids aged five and under are unvaccinated, they have to be conservative with letting the staff back to the workplace – especially since they deal with immunocompromised children.
“We’re experiencing really high volumes of patients right now – that almost exceeds our pre-pandemic volumes,” Fischer said on CTV’s Your Morning.
At Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, the emergency room is now filled not just with children impacted by COVID-19 but other seasonal viruses, Fischer says. He believes a root cause of busier emergency rooms to be a lack of access to care.
