Jewish General’s ER reaches 211% occupancy amid influx of COVID patients

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For two days in a row, the Jewish General Hospital has posted the highest rate of emergency-room overcrowding in the city as it grapples with an influx of COVID-19 patients, the Montreal Gazette has learned.

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On Thursday afternoon, the Jewish General’s ER occupancy rate jumped to 196 per cent and on Friday it soared to as high as 211 per cent.

The Jewish General is considered one of the most efficiently run hospitals in Quebec and had never previously recorded the highest ER overcrowding rate in the metropolis.

Meanwhile, the Lakeshore General Hospital’s ER in Pointe-Claire is struggling with a surge in patients suffering from gastroenteritis in the midst of the pandemic, a source said. The Lakeshore General’s ER was filled to 152 per cent of its capacity at around 4:30 p.m. Friday.

“It looks like there’s an increase in COVID-positive patients that require admission,” Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg, the executive director of Montreal’s west-central health authority in charge of the Jewish General, said in a brief interview Friday.

“It’s too early to know (what’s going on) but by Monday it should be clear.”

In medical circles, the surge in ER overcrowding at the Jewish General in the past two days could be considered a so-called sentinel event, requiring more attention by public health authorities. On Thursday, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé tweeted that “the downward trend in (COVID) hospitalizations appears to continue. (Still,) we must be vigilant.”

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On Friday, Dubé suggested in the National Assembly that Quebec might drop its requirement for vaccine passports to shop in big-box stores and other commercial establishments, following similar moves by Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, reflecting the fact that COVID hospitalizations have declined across the country.

Quebec has reported a drop of 1,211 COVID hospitalizations since the Jan. 18 peak of the fifth wave, when a total of 3,425 people were being treated in hospitals across the province — higher than at any other point in the pandemic. On Friday, the hospitalization tally fell by 98 to 2,214, with intensive-care stays declining by nine to 164.

That decline, however, has coincided with a new policy last month by the Health Ministry to transfer some elderly COVID patients earlier than usual back to long-term care facilities. This change, which was taken to protect overwhelmed hospitals, has indirectly contributed to lowering the rate of COVID hospitalizations, a highly placed government source confirmed to the Montreal Gazette.

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Some European countries — notably Denmark (which was hit much earlier with an Omicron-driven wave) and the Netherlands — have observed upticks in COVID hospitalizations in recent days, calling into question what some observers have criticized as a hasty decision to lift public health protections like vaccine passports.

By 6:30 p.m. Friday, the Jewish General’s ER occupancy rate had started to decline, but remained unusually high at 181 per cent. In a previous interview, Rosenberg ruled out other respiratory viruses causing a surge in ER admissions, noting that there have been no cases of influenza.

At the Lakeshore General, a source confirmed this as well, but said: “We have had some gastros coming in, so it could be that, too. (We) might be getting slammed with COVID, too.”

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