Manitoba’s new COVID strategy ignores vulnerable people, hospital systems, say scientists – CBC
Province announced Wednesday it’s shifting from lowering case counts to ‘mitigating risk’ in community
Jan 13, 2022
Some scientists and health-care professionals say Manitoba’s new plan for handling COVID-19 ignores vulnerable people and hospital systems.
“I think we are unprepared from the health care side for the tsunami of admissions and hospital demands that are going to occur if we just kind of let it go,” said Dr. Philippe Lagacé-Wiens, a medical microbiologist at St. Boniface Hospital.
“There’s still enough people who are frail and will develop complications, or who are unimmunized that will really flood the health-care system. And nothing I have heard so far is satisfying my concerns about the capacity of the health-care system.”
On Wednesday, Premier Heather Stefanson announced the province is changing its COVID-19 strategy. Instead of trying to contain the surge caused by the highly contagious Omicron variant, public health and provincial officials will try to manage risk in the community.
