Health-care workers brace for COVID-19 surge

Front-line health-care workers are coping with aresurgenceof COVID-19 cases in the nation's capital and the Ottawa Valley.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, CBC Ottawa has been checking in withan intensive and palliative care physicianand a rural paramedic.

The series took a break while case numbers were relatively low, but with the recent surge in positive tests, wegot back in touch.

The paramedic

Renfrew County paramedic Chris Day says he hasn't touched a day of vacation yet this year.

The 44-year-old has been helping swab hundreds of kids at Fellowes High School and Westmeath Public School after COVID-19 outbreaks there.

• Ottawa Valley school first to close in Ontario following COVID-19 outbreak

Renfrew County was relatively free of COVID-19 cases for months until a flare-up in September, according to the healthunit'smonthly profile.

Day blames the increaseon new exposuresas people returned to work and school, some after shopping for school supplies in Ottawa. Pembroke is also the eastern gateway to Algonquin Park, he added, which continues to welcome throngs of visitors from across the province.

"Clusters can pop up," said Day. "All it takes is one person."

Day himselfhas been swabbed sixtimes for COVID-19, always with a negative result.

He also handled the swabbing duties for his family when, two weeks ago, two of his children had runny noses and congestion. His older child was fine, but his five-year-old hid under the bed, Day said.

"She wanted nothing to do with it," he said.

In fact, Day said constantly subjecting kids to COVID-19 swabbing is hard both on him and his fellow paramedics.

"Obviously, it's a very uncomfortable procedure. So when you're dealing with two-year-olds, three-year-olds, four-year-olds, hearing them crying?Having to have mom and dad help us hold them in place?That's pretty rough on a number of us, especially those of us who have young kids ourselves," said Day.

Day says he has a wide range of inducements to "bribe" the kids, including small toys, squishy balls, stickers and lollipops albeit the sugar-free variety.

"Can't work with the health unit and then give out sugar," he said.

The doctor

Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremantengmay be anintensive and palliative care physician at the Montfort and Ottawa Hospitals, but he's also a parent and like many parents, having his two older children back in school has beenthe fall's high point.

"That's a big win," said Kyeremanteng.

However, the return to school has coincided with a COVID-19 spike in the city, along with more than 130 cases tied to schools in the Ottawa-Gatineau region.

"I never thought we were out of the woods," said Kyeremanteng. "We knew we were coming into a season where there was going to be more respiratory illnesses. My real question was, 'To what degree?' What's the result of that [increase] going to be?"

It doesn't tell me that necessarily we're going to be overwhelmed-Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng

The most important measure, he said, is there hasn't yet been a "significant" rise in hospitalizations, ICU admissions to deaths although there have been some increases, according to numbers from Ottawa Public Health.

The 43-year-old said he wasn't entirely surehe understood the claim by Dr. Vera Etches, the city's medical officer of health, thatOttawa's health care system is in crisis.

He does agree there are elements that are seriously struggling,especially around COVID-19 testing and contact tracing.

But as he puts it, "What I don't think right now is that our hospitals are going to be overwhelmed and we're going to be Italy or we're going to be New York."

Even so, the current caseload trends are"moving in the wrong direction," said Kyeremanteng.

"The fact that it's going up tells us that we've still got to stay vigilant. We still have to mask. We've still have to distance. We've got to do our part," he said. "But it doesn't tell me that necessarily we're going to be overwhelmed."