Dr. Craig Jenne, PhD (L) and Dr. Daniel Gregson, MD (R), explain why hospitals have little room to treat influenza this year.
Oct. 14, 2022
The ability for hospitals to take on more patients is in a delicate place. Drs. Dan Gregson and Craig Jenne explain why.
Getting vaccinated against influenza this year will help prevent a visit to crowded hospitals. Having three and four Covid-19 vaccine doses has been proven to reduce severe disease, hospitalizations, and death.
Alberta hospitals have had more than 1,000 COVID-19 patients for more than two weeks, according to the latest coronavirus data released by the province on Wednesday.
It’s the first release of COVID data in two weeks when, on Oct. 5, Dr. Deena Hinshaw tweeted Alberta Health was running into a “data flow problem.”
As of Oct. 10, there were 1,014 in Alberta hospitals, an increase of 34 from the previous reporting period two weeks ago. ICU patients are down eight to 31 in the same period.
Dr. Dan Gregson, MD, an infectious diseases physician, University of Calgary associate professor, and member of the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases, said the ability for hospitals to take on more patients is in a delicate place, especially if a relatively-diminutive autumn wave of COVID-19 infections sends more to hospital.
Snyder Institute member and University of Calgary infectious diseases associate professor Dr. Craig Jenne, PhD, said a silver lining in the third autumn of the pandemic in Alberta is the relatively slow rise in hospitalizations when compared to fall 2021. “We really do need to ensure that people are seeking to top up their immune systems before that virus settles in and we simply do not have the health care capacity to deal with a large number of patients requiring hospitalization for flu, as well as patients needing (hospitalization for) COVID,” Jenne added. Read more.
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