At the Jewish General Hospital, where under normal circumstances there are 24 intensive care beds, capacity has been increased to 30, with 20 of those occupied by COVID-19 patients, according to ICU chief Paul Warshawsky. All the ICUs in Montreal in particular are working to increase their capacity, he said. There are plans to go up to 32 to 34, depending on how we decide to do it. Then we have to open a second ICU, which we did in the first wave in what was the cardiology department. But in the first wave, that was a little easier to do because for reasons we still don t understand, there were less cardiac patients.
MONTREAL Health-care workers in many Quebec hospitals say the situation is on the brink of collapse, as nurses, doctors and support staff work overtime to fight the second wave of COVID-19 and the drastically high daily increases in cases. Saturday, the province reported the highest single-day jump in novel coronavirus cases with 2,038 bringing the province s total number of cases since the start of the pandemic to 174,839. The Quebec Institute of Public Health says there are 17,879 active cases including 1,005 hospitalizations. Health-care workers say there aren t enough workers. Nurses, doctors and support staff have been working extended hours with little or no vacations for more than nine months and experts fear the worst of COVID-19 s second wave hasn t even come yet.