All 12 Horizon Health hospitals are operating on orange level restrictions, now that Zone 3 (Fredericton) is in the orange phase of COVID-19 recovery.
President and CEO of Horizon Health Karen McGrath says over 100 healthcare workers were self-isolating as of late last week.
Out of those 100, McGrath is able to confirm that between “four or five” are COVID-19 positive.
Another 50 staff, she says, were “redeployed from the regular positions to help control the spread of the virus.”
Redeployed staff were sent to areas such as testing sites to help complete more tests after public exposures.
McGrath says that “our healthcare system is in a very vulnerable state.”
“The same issues that threatened our healthcare system before the pandemic… a lack of staff, a lack of beds and limited resources in general, have become even more magnified during the pandemic. With the recent rise in new cases and the increased risk for potential exposure to COVID-19 in our province, this is especially true.”
Due to the reshuffling and absence of staff, some health services have been reduced or cancelled.
Some surgeries are cancelled, patients who visit community health centres (such as COPD or diabetic patients) may miss follow-up appointments, and childrens’ immunizations are delayed.
McGrath is encouraging New Brunswickers with non-emergencies to avoid the emergency rooms if possible.
This includes those with mild COVID-19 symptoms, as they must be treated as “COVID-19 suspect” in emergency rooms, which demands more staff.
Instead, she recommends contacting a primary care provider and making an appointment, visiting a walk-in clinic, consulting a pharmacist, or calling 811.
Sackville does not have a walk-in clinic, but the Jean Coteau pharmacy and the Corner Drug Store are available for consultation.
Those with COVID-19 symptoms, however, should self-isolate and get tested as soon as possible.
McGrath asks New Brunswickers to help healthcare workers by following Public Health guidelines.
“If just one person failed to comply with self-isolation guidelines set in place by Public Health and visited a nurse practitioner or family physician at a community health center, the nurse practitioner or physician would have to self-isolate for 14 days. On average, these primary care providers would see 12 to 15 patients a day. This could result in 120 patients not being seen and cared for in a two week period. To go one step further if eight other health providers working at the community health center are exposed to COVID[-19]. The result could be 1,280 patients without proper care in a two week time period. To go one step even further, this means these patients often have nowhere to turn, but to our emergency departments for primary health care not for emergency care.”
McGrath says the healthcare system could be overwhelmed by very few hospitalized cases of COVID-19.
As few as “eight or nine admissions to one hospital… particularly if many of them needed ICU” could cause “difficulty.”