Warnings of never-before-seen sudden COVID deaths at home
Ontario's chief coroner is warning about adults with seemingly mild COVID symptoms dying suddenly at home.
At the same time, COVID variants are causing more severe illness, with 15 more patients transferred in 24 hours to this area from overwhelmed GTA hospitals.
But it's those who aren't even making it to a hospital that have raised concerns about a never-before-seen threat.
We've been seeing a number of people dying in the community outside of the hospital which is new, unfortunate and sad," said Dr. Dirk Huyer. These people have not been able to obtain health care because the disease affected them so quickly and so seriously."
Huyer estimated there have been two sudden deaths a day for the last two weeks in Ontario ranging in age from their 30s to their 70s.
These are all cases that are just coming to our attention now," said Huyer. It's something I felt was important for people to understand the seriousness of what we're dealing with."
A first look suggests they had symptoms that wouldn't normally cause concern and ambulances were never called before they were found dead.
When I've read through the information on the significance of the symptoms, these were people that weren't necessarily appearing ... to be needing to go to hospital or an ambulance to be called," said Huyer. It's not that people were ignoring symptoms ... These were people who did have a stable condition and then deteriorated very quickly to their unfortunate deaths."
The chief coroner couldn't provide an explanation or way to prevent it other than reducing the spread of COVID.
We are still evaluating, trying to understand all of the circumstances," said Huyer. I need to drill down a little bit deeper."
At the same time, the strain increased on Hamilton's hospitals with the number of COVID patients being cared for increasing to 151 on Thursday from 139 the day before. Five of the 12 additional patients were from the GTA.
The number of COVID patients in Hamilton's intensive-care units increased to 62 from 55 the day before.
GTA hospitals have transferred 88 patients in the last nine days to this area, including 20 to St. Joseph's Healthcare, 15 to Hamilton General Hospital and 13 to Juravinski Hospital.
Of the rest, 11 went to Burlington's Joseph Brant Hospital, 16 went to Niagara Health and 13 to Brantford General.
In total, GTA hospitals have transferred 179 patients to this area since Jan. 11.
Joanna Frketich is a Hamilton-based reporter covering health for The Spectator. Reach her via email: jfrketich@thespec.com