Bed shortage blamed after Winnipeg patient with MS unwillingly moved to COVID ward

A Winnipeg hospital overwhelmed with more patients than it had capacity for sent a man who didn't have COVID-19, but lives with multiple sclerosis, into an outbreak ward where he says he shouldn't have been.

After nearly two days in an emergency department bed at Health Sciences Centre, waiting to be admitted, Vince Mancini pleaded with medical staff not to move him into an area of the hospital where he was more likely to contract COVID-19.

Mancini doesn't know why his pleas were dismissed, but he suspects the hospital had no other beds. 

"Knowing that I have to go through a treatment [for MS], knowing that contracting COVID right now would be very harmful to my health, it hit me very, very hard," Mancini said, explaining his treatments would have been cancelled if he got COVID-19.

His case illustrates how Manitoba emergency departments have increasingly served as overflow wards for patients waiting to be admitted into an in-patient ward.

Mancini was at the Health Sciences Centre in May to regain strength in his left leg that was sapped by his multiple sclerosis.

Over two days, he says he heard traumatic conversations from nearby patients, and so asked to be relocated from the ER.

But the 33-year-old, who works in project management for a technology company, didn't expect to be pushed into a COVID-19 outbreak ward instead.

Mancini insisted he'd rather stay in the emergency department bed, but that request was denied. He wasn't told why.

"I know there was a big wait to get in from the emergency room waiting room," Mancini said.

"To move me out and put me into a bed and actually open up more space [in the ER], I think, was the main reason for this happening."

Multiple sclerosis is a potentially disabling disease. Medical experts say while it's not believed those with MS are generally at greater risk of severe disease if they get COVID-19, the impact of a viral infection may be greater for them. As well, a recently published study says there is evidence patients receiving some therapies for MS are at an increased risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes.

An emergency room nurse at HSC said the hospital is routinely short of beds for the number of patients seeking care — and the dire staffing shortage is making things worse.

"We actually have no staff to even keep our current department open," said the nurse, whom CBC has agreed not to name because she fears reprisal at her work, in an interview last month.