This is what the latest pandemic wave is like for the ICU team at Humber River Hospital
CBC
As staff at Humber River Hospital in Toronto struggle to save COVID-19 patients who are heaving for breath, these health care workers can barely catch their own. Omicron's staggering spread is putting a crushing load on hospitals that were already under immense strain, and on their exhausted staff.
The ICU at Humber River Hospital is operating at over capacity during this wave and has remained full throughout most of the pandemic.
Working on the brink of collapse has become a new normal for health care workers, and it is forcing hospitals to take a hard look at how to cope with this wave — and any that may be still to come. CBC's The National visited the hospital, where front-line workers described the pressures they're under, and said lessons have to be learned and real changes must come from this crisis.
Nurse Kimisha Marshall oversees a team of health care workers who are proning a COVID patient. Turning a patient onto their stomach allows their lungs to expand and take in more desperately needed air.
Proning is a daily practice in Humber River Hospital's ICU and requires at least half a dozen staff each time — once to prone patients, and again several hours later to reposition them.
Marshall says it's exhausting work, and it feels endless because if a patient dies or as soon as one recovers enough to leave the ICU, another comes in.
"It is endless, it's just endless," Marshall said.
Chronic staff shortages at Humber River Hospital have gone from bad to worse in the past two years. Omicron's high infection rate means more doctors and nurses are calling in sick, too.
ICU nurse Ashley De Lumen says as health care workers fall ill, the load gets heavier for those still working. With up to four nurses off at a time since Omicron hit, the hardest part is managing more ICU patients in any given shift, she says.
Omicron's staggering spread means the proportion of critically ill people is overwhelming.
Some ICU patients are vaccinated but still vulnerable, including those who are immunocompromised. Meanwhile, most patients are unvaccinated, and unlike earlier in the pandemic, De Lumen says vaccines could have prevented many ICU admissions in this latest wave.
De Lumen says treating unvaccinated patients in the ICU can feel like an exercise in futility and frustration.
WATCH | Nurse Ashley De Lumen talks about feeling frustrated that a vaccination might have helped some patients avoid the ICU:
Hospitalizations and deaths are lagging indicators of the impact of a pandemic. Those numbers tend to rise well after infections are transmitted. That means even as case numbers in the community stabilize, any reprieve in hospitals is expected weeks later.