Manitoba spurns calls for mask mandates as children's hospital buckles under respiratory virus strain
CBC
Manitoba's premier says the province isn't looking at bringing back rules around wearing masks, as a surge in kids with respiratory viruses clogs Winnipeg's children's hospital.
That spike in patients has led the Health Sciences Centre Children's Hospital to ask staff to work extra shifts and open contingency areas to handle more patients, the organization that oversees health-care delivery in Manitoba says.
The hospital is also offering overtime and pulling staff from other areas to work in its over-capacity pediatric intensive care unit, or PICU, a Shared Health spokesperson said in an email on Thursday.
Eleven kids were sick enough to have ended up in that unit on Thursday afternoon. That's two patients above the PICU's baseline capacity of nine staffed beds, though the spokesperson said the unit has regularly had to expand beyond that capacity since spring.
Premier Heather Stefanson said telling people to start wearing a mask again isn't where the province is focused this flu season.
"We've been out talking about getting vaccinated and getting flu shots," Stefanson said at a news conference about adding health-care professionals to the public system.
"For right now, we're not looking at any mask mandates."
The crowded emergency department has led to long waits for families like Star Spence's.
Spence said they've been in the hospital for a week with her six-year-old daughter, Clare, who she said has a cyst on her pancreas.
When they got to the emergency room last Thursday evening, Spence said they ended up waiting between four and five hours to get into a room and about 24 hours before they were admitted to a ward.
"There were a lot of sick, crying babies," Spence said.
"They started only allowing one parent with each child in the waiting room and the other parent would have to wait either outside or out of the hospital until the child was called into the room."
Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, is among those calling for people to start wearing masks again as hospitals nationwide cope with a surge of respiratory viruses.
So is Winnipeg emergency room physician Dr. Doug Eyolfson, who said the need for mask mandates is especially clear after the medical director of the city's children's hospital's emergency department said it has reached the point of crisis.
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.