For ICU doctor, Omicron is a feeling of ‘continuous, unrelenting pressure’
Global News
The stress on the health system from the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is radically different compared with the other four waves since March 2020, the doctor said.
For intensive care doctor Sarah McMullen, the Omicron wave of COVID-19 seems like a twisting, turning carnival ride, leaving her wondering when she’ll get to step off.
“Right now, what it feels like is similar to when you go to the exhibition and you get on the Scrambler: it feels like continuous, unrelenting pressures from all directions,” the physician at Halifax’s Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre said in an interview Wednesday.
The stress on the health system from the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is radically different compared with the other four waves since March 2020, McMullen said.
For one thing, there are only a handful of COVID-19 patients in her unit — the largest intensive care centre in Atlantic Canada. Earlier waves saw pandemic patients take up many of the beds, she said.
But despite causing fewer hospitalizations, the Omicron wave is combined with shortages of staff off sick with COVID-19 or isolating after being exposed to the virus — and a high flow of other gravely ill patients to her ward.
The 46-year-old doctor estimated Wednesday that “two or three” of the 18 beds in her units were occupied with people who contracted the Omicron mutation of the virus. Across the province, there were seven intensive care patients with COVID-19, less than half the peak of May 18, 2021, when a pandemic high of 25 people were in intensive care with the virus.
In addition, McMullen said COVID-19 patients who are vaccinated often spend just days in the unit, rather than weeks in earlier waves.
According to figures from Nova Scotia Health, about 97 per cent of the 106 available intensive care beds in the province are occupied. The government says the health system has the capacity to add further beds — known as “surge” capacity — if an overflow occurs.
