GTA hospitals seeing spike in respiratory viruses in emergency rooms, doctors say

Some hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area are seeing a spike in the numbers of people coming in with respiratory viruses, emergency room physicians say.

Dr. Dennis Cho, deputy medical director of emergency departments at University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, said on Monday that the wave of people with respiratory complaints in ERs marks the return of cold and flu season in pre-pandemic numbers.

Cho said flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) numbers have doubled in the past two weeks at UHN, which includes Toronto General and Toronto Western hospitals. Now, when he goes to work, he said the emergency room is packed.

"There is still COVID around, but everything else is back, all the colds, the flus, the other viruses that contribute to cough and cold season. They're back and they're back with a vengeance," Cho said.

"I think we're only expecting numbers to go up. The holiday season appropriately is a time when people can get together. When people mingle, viruses mingle as well and they can transmit from person to person. We are anticipating a busy season."

Cho said while UHN is seeing young and old people who are sick with viruses, not everyone needs to go to the hospital. He advises people to judge the severity of their symptoms, urging people to go to the emergency room if they have any of the following: severe shortness of breath; inability to stay hydrated; and decreased level of consciousness, such as when people are confused or not acting like themselves.

Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious diseases physician at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, said on Monday that doctors are continuing to see a respiratory wave that began in late October or early November. He said some viruses that were not prevalent during the pandemic, such as rhinovirus or adenovirus, are resurfacing.

As for COVID-19, he said its severity seems to have dropped given immunity in the community.

"The people that we're seeing that are occasionally getting very sick from COVID, they tend to be quite elderly — we're talking in their 90s, or with very profound immune suppression, such as someone with a transplant or a blood cancer," he said.

Chakrabarti said the number of people going to ERs with respiratory complaints is not surprising.

"What we are seeing here is not anything different than what we saw in the years before the pandemic. It's expected at this time of year. We see stress on the health-care system."

As for the other respiratory illnesses circulating, Chakrabarti said he expects those to drop in January after the holiday spike.

"Things tend to look a lot brighter come the new year," he said.

Toronto Public Health (TPH), for its part, sent home a notice to families in the Toronto District School Board on Friday on ways to reduce the spread of viruses over the holidays. TPH recommends people: