Outbreaks of influenza, COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses affecting children put so much pressure on the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) that they have to seek help from the Cross-Canadian Red.
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The organization will deploy administrative staff during the week to relieve the workload of the CHEO teams, who will be able to focus on caring for the children.
The Ottawa hospital complex, like children’s hospitals in Quebec and the rest of Canada, is dealing with a worrying surge in sick children this fall.
“We have redeployed staff in the nursing and surgical units, added new beds and workers to the pediatric intensive care unit, emergency and recovery units, and asked non-medical staff to support medical teams when possible,” he said. claimed Sunday CHEO.
In addition to the Red Cross, several hospitals and organizations in and around Ottawa are also helping by lending staff or accepting patient transfers, CHEO said.
The deployment of Red Cross staff to a hospital to relieve staff is reminiscent of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the organization lent a helping hand to several establishments. On the Quebec side, no Red Cross teams have yet deployed this fall, however the organization confirmed on Sunday.
Quebec public health director Luc Boileau will hold a press conference on Monday to provide an update on the situation.
Pediatric flu
After two years marked by COVID-19, the flu, carried by thousands of cases of H3N2 flu, is significantly increasing the occupancy of emergency rooms in children’s hospitals, at rates not seen for some time, we can see in the data the latest federal government flu check bulletin.
Thus, for week 47 of November 20-26, 223 children under the age of 16 were hospitalized due to the flu in the country. By comparison, during the corresponding week for the five pre-pandemic flu seasons (2014-2015 to 2019-2020), there were an average of 11 children hospitalized with the flu.
Children are, proportionally, the most represented patients in hospitals for flu, with 707 hospitalizations, of which 95 in intensive care, among children under 16 since the beginning of the season.
More broadly, those aged 0-19 accounted for 50.8 percent of the 14,385 laboratory-confirmed influenza cases since late August. Children aged 0 to 4 alone account for 18.1% of flu cases.
“The highest cumulative rate of hospitalizations up to week 47 was among children under the age of 5 (41/100,000 population) and adults over the age of 65 (33/100,000 population),” the bulletin points out. .
