Younger, unvaccinated people plugging up Quebec's beleaguered hospitals amid 4th wave
CBC
At Laval's Cité-de-la-Santé Hospital, Dr. Joseph Dahine says all eight patients in his intensive care unit with COVID-19 on Friday were unvaccinated or not adequately vaccinated.
Their average age is around 40 years old.
"They're sick, they have very damaged lungs, they require ventilator support, most of them are intubated," said Dahine, an intensive care specialist at the hospital, which was operating at 131 per cent as of Saturday afternoon.
An unabated staffing shortage has left many emergency rooms in regions like Montreal, Laval, Montérégie, the Laurentians and the Lanaudière swamped and operating well above capacity as patients flood hospitals, prompting some of them to curtail hours of operation, reduce services or even shut their doors altogether.
But while the ER situation is reminiscent of previous waves of the pandemic, the demographic of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has changed amid the fourth.
Public health data indicate that people in younger age groups, especially those who aren't vaccinated, are accounting for more hospitalizations this time around compared to the first three waves where the older population made up the large majority of the province's COVID-19 patients.
Last month, which signalled the start of the fourth wave according to many experts, people between 40 and 49 made up the majority of hospitalizations, followed second by people aged 50 to 59.