![Sask. starts breaking down COVID-19 hospital numbers by incidental vs. COVID-related illness](https://i.cbc.ca/1.6259733.1637694104!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_620/icu-patient.jpg)
Sask. starts breaking down COVID-19 hospital numbers by incidental vs. COVID-related illness
CBC
The Saskatchewan government has started providing a new breakdown of COVID-19 hospitalization numbers in its public reporting process.
The province now distinguishes between people who are in hospital due to COVID-19 and incidental cases of the disease. Incidental cases are people who are in hospital for other reasons and have no COVID symptoms, but test positive for the virus following hospitalization, according to Saskatchewan's dashboard.
"If you're in for an arm fracture and then during [the] normal screening process, you're found to be COVID-positive, you would show up in our numbers as a hospitalized COVID case," said Derek Miller, chief of emergency operations for the Saskatchewan Health Authority on Wednesday, one day before the new reporting mechanism started.
"That's one of the things we want to see clarified going forward."
The hospitalization numbers were categorized this way for the first time on Thursday, when the province's dashboard reported 100 total patients with the virus in Saskatchewan hospitals, 12 of them in ICU.
Of the non-ICU patients, 42 were admitted for COVID-19, 39 were incidental and seven were still undetermined, said the dashboard. Of the 12 ICU patients with COVID-19, one was an incidental, asymptomatic case.
"I think this differentiation is going to be very important to understand how severe Omicron is," said Saskatchewan's chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab on Thursday.
"It's critical for the health system to plan in terms of how many acute care beds they need, plus ICU beds."
The new distinction among hospitalized COVID-19 cases is a good idea, but proper communication will be important, says a Saskatoon intensive care specialist.
"We do not want to give people the impression that these 70, 80, 90 patients that were consistently in our ICUs in the previous wave were patients who were sick with something else," said Dr. Hassan Masri.
"They were indeed sick from COVID pneumonia. And so it is really important to understand that and not contribute to the misinformation that exists out there."
Masri said that even when people are in hospital for something other than COVID-19, an unrelated positive test result after admission can still complicate things.
Patients with the virus will have to be isolated from others or they will create outbreaks at the hospital, according to the Saskatoon doctor.
"Even if people are admitted and even if they don't have COVID pneumonia and they're not sick from a breathing perspective, it does not mean that it is a straightforward process," said Masri.