Northern Ontario hospitals taking in COVID-19 patients from southern hotspots

Some COVID-19 patients from southern Ontario are expected to head to intensive care units in the northeast this week.

Hospitals in the northhave not seen the surge of severe COVID cases that are overwhelming hospitals in the Toronto area and seeing patients treated in tents and by emergency workers being flown into help.

Dr. Rishi Ghosh works in the intensive care unit at the Sault Area Hospital, where they currently have zero COVID patients.

He says they recently had a COVID patient who returned to Canada from abroad, but was treated in Sault Ste. Marie instead of their hometown hospital.

Ghosh says the hospital has been told to prepare for the possible transfer of patients from the south this week.

But hewonders if this third wave will eventually wash over Sault Ste. Marie.

"That's always a concern, because we don't know how COVID is going to spread. It's a little bit of a black box and we don't know until we're in the midst of the crisis," says Ghosh.

"Is it going to be contained before reaching us or is it going to continue to increase exponentially and engulf our community as well? Nobody really knows. We can only speculate."

The hospitals in North Bay and Timmins also currently have no COVID patients in their critical care units and are standing by to receive patients from the south.

The Sudbury hospital has been told that a COVID patient will be transferred there sometime this week.

Health Sciences North does have three people suffering from coronavirus being treated in the intensive care unit, a number that hasn't changed much over the past few weeks when hundreds of Sudburians tested positive for COVID-19.

CEO Dominic Giroux says the province has also asked the hospital to make a list of employees who could be sent to help out in the hotspots.

"At this stage the preference in most regions is to transfer the patients instead of redeploying staff," says Giroux.

He says plans have been in place for the past year on what to do if the Sudbury hospital is overrun with severely ill COVID patients, but thankfullythey haven't had to use them yet.