Whole families in ICU as COVID-19 variants hit the young and healthy

Whole families are being admitted to the province's intensive care units as variants are killing faster and younger," warned the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.

In Hamilton, cases have risen sharply over two weeks to the fifth highest rate in Ontario, provincial projections presented Thursday show.

It's spreading far more quickly than it was before and we cannot vaccinate quickly enough to break this third wave," said Adalsteinn (Steini) Brown, dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. With the new variants that are both more contagious and more dangerous, we're seeing situations where whole families end up in intensive care all at the same time."

With Ontario's hospitals caring for a record number of more than 400 COVID patients in the ICU, families fighting for their lives are having to be separated and sent to regions in the province with beds to spare. Hamilton's hospitals were caring for 91 COVID patients Friday.

One family ended up spread between three hospitals - one in Simcoe, one in Toronto and an adult child on a ventilator in a third city," said Brown. Another family ended up spread between three cities ... and all of them died."

Hamilton is now behind only Peel, Lambton, Toronto and Thunder Bay when it comes to weekly new cases per 100,000 residents. The key metric shot up from March 15 to March 28, pulling Hamilton ahead of longtime hot spot York Region.

As of March 31, the rate was 108 compared to around 76 on March 15. Increasing rates have been seen in three-quarters of the province as variants make up more of the cases.

The drastic surge" in numbers, which Ontario's Health Minister Christine Elliott called alarming," caused the province to pull the emergency brake for all of Ontario for a four-week shutdown starting Saturday.

However, the Ontario Medical Association and the Association of Local Public Health Agencies says it doesn't go far enough, and called for further restrictions. The provincial projections themselves modelled a stay-at-home order as the way to get the numbers down.

Even with the shutdown, Ontario's ICUs are predicted to have nearly 800 COVID patients within a few weeks, which Brown described as a place where we are not able to provide all the care as well as we want."

That is a place where clinicians need to make hard decisions that you'd never want them to have to make" he said. Where you will see loss of life and the sort of challenges we've seen in northern Italy, that we've seen in New York, that we've seen in other jurisdictions where the hospitals have filled up as you are seeing now in France."

Ontario's chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, says the province has been adding more hospital capacity to prevent the health-care system from becoming overwhelmed. A parking lot on Ferguson Avenue North near Hamilton General has been readied for a pop-up hospital with up to 80 beds.

Driving the strain on the health-care system are the variants, particularly B.1.1.7, with the risk of ICU admission being two times higher, the chances of being put on a ventilator three times higher and the likelihood of death is one-and-half times higher.

COVID is hitting younger, healthier people," said Brown. There is a substantial increase in the number of young people admitted to intensive care units."

The projections show 46 per cent of COVID ICU admissions were those under the age of 60 from March 15 to 21 compared to 30 per cent from Dec. 14 to 20 in the second wave.

The other major worry is asymptomatic spread of the variants is up to two-and-a-half times greater, which Brown says reinforces the importance of public health measures like masks and physical distancing.

The spread can be seen in the number of tests coming back positive, which climbed to 4.1 per cent in Hamilton on Thursday compared to under two per cent one month ago.

The reproduction rate went up to 1.21 in Hamilton as of April 1. This number needs to stay below 0.7 in the presence of the variants.

This is a new pandemic," said Premier Doug Ford on Thursday. We are now fighting a new enemy. The new variants are far more dangerous than before, they spread faster and they do more harm."

What is not different are the weapons we have to fight COVID, said Brown.

We are at a place where our decisions now will make a difference," he said. See your friends and your family outside ... Second, please get vaccinated ... If you can help other people get vaccinated, please do it. Help them book an appointment, help them get to an appointment."

The science table again called on government to vaccinate in high-risk neighbourhoods that are bearing the brunt of the pandemic and make sure all can follow public health measures with paid sick days.

Joanna Frketich is a Hamilton-based reporter covering health for The Spectator. Reach her via email: jfrketich@thespec.com