N.L. health officials expect COVID-19 hospitalizations to spike in coming weeks

Health officials in Newfoundland and Labrador expect the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations to spike in the coming weeks, topping last fall's peak of 16 people.

Dr. Proton Rahman, head of the province's pandemic data analysis group, shared on Wednesday the province's forecasting data, which suggests the province could see a peak of 20 to 30 people in hospital as the Omicron variant continues to spread.

As of Wednesday, seven people in Newfoundland and Labrador are in hospital as a result of COVID-19. Three of them are in intensive care, according to Health Minister John Haggie.

Rahman said the number of anticipated hospitalizations comes from using data from other provinces with similar cases along with the province's own data, which suggests hospitalizations usually begin to increase eight to 10 days after the beginning of a new wave of COVID.

"Next week is going to be key, because there are a lot of active patients, some of which may come into hospital, so we're really interested in seeing the projection forward," he said.

But the province's current hospitalization rate is lower than expected, said Rahman, likely due to the province having some of the highest vaccination rates in Canada. People over the age of 50, who he said have the highest risk of hospitalization, are largely avoiding severe illness because they're mostly fully vaccinated, he said.

The province also reported 731 new cases on Wednesday, including 229 in a backlog of tests that were sent out of province for confirmation.

Since Tuesday, there have been 498 recoveries — a new single-day record for the province, topping Tuesday's 494 — leaving 6,443 known active cases.

Just over 4,300 COVID-19 tests have been completed in the past 24 hours, according to Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, raising the number of completed tests to 443,284. Rahman said national data indicates the province ranks among the highest in the country in per capita testing.

Although daily case numbers are still in the hundreds per day, Rahman said it's promising that they appear to have plateaued, suggesting the wave may be peaking. He also said people shouldn't focus on a single day of exponentially higher case numbers as a sign of bad things to come, because fluctuations in case counts are to be expected.

Rahman said the province's newer data presents the opportunity for more realistic modelling, since past predictions were based on "what-if scenarios," as the province's low case numbers in earlier stages of the pandemic made forecasting tricky.

"The numbers will be closer, but there's still limitations in terms of predictions. It's better to overestimate … than underestimate and get cut short, but hopefully we don't see as many cases as we predict," he said.

This is a breaking news update. A previous version of this story is below.

With COVID-19 cases climbing across Newfoundland and Labrador, the head of the province's largest nurses' union says the health-care system is strained, with staff facing exhaustion and their own bouts with the highly contagious Omicron variant.