Province won't say how many ventilators are in northeastern Ontario hospitals, but says there's enough

The provincial government is refusing to discuss numbers of ventilators in northeastern Ontario hospitals, but assures the public that there will enough if the COVID-19 outbreak gets worse.

The Northeast Local Health Integration Network, the provincial agency overseeing the health system in the region, directed the question to the Ministry of Health.

The ministry says it has a stockpile of 200 ventilators ready to be distributed across Ontario and has 300 more on order, but didn't answer CBC's question about how many of the breathing machines are in the northeast now.

The region's largest hospital Health Sciences North in Sudbury, which isn't providing any staff for media interviews during the COVID-19 crisis, says it has 62 ventilators and isn't worried about a shortage thanks to that provincial stockpile.

Dr. Rishi Ghosh from the Sault Area Hospital says they have 12 ventilators, but four of them are on loan from the province to deal with patient surges and could be moved elsewhere.

"We're anxious about how many patients are going to need these and if we have enough to provide all the patients," says Ghosh, the medical director of critical care and cardiology.

He says the Sault Ste. Marie hospital also has several machines that help people with chronic lung problems, plus ventilators used during surgeries that could help COVID patients "in a pinch."

"These things can change in a flash, so if we get an influx, it's very easy to use up 10 or 12 vents in a couple of days," says Ghosh.

He says plans are being put in place to establish "hot and cold" zones in the hospital to isolate those infected with coronavirus. Sault Area Hospital is also setting up tents outside to deal with extra patients.

Ghosh says the tough part will be if they have to decide who gets a machine to help them breathe and who doesn't.

He says the reports from hospitals in areas hit hard with the virus have been "horrifying."

"We've been fortunate not to have a patient influx with COVID yet, but we think it's going to happen based on the rapid rise in numbers that we're seeing throughout Canada and the U.S." he says.

"We've never dealt with something like this before."

Ghosh says there is not much in the way of treatment for a new virus like COVID, so it's best to keep patients out of hospital in the first place. 

"Really we're just trying to bide time for your body to overcome the virus and that's basically a salvage type intervention," he says. 

"Certainly stopping the spread in the community is the best way to stay healthy and hopefully get through to the other side of this."

On top of doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists will be on the frontline of any COVID-19 outbreak in northern Ontario hospitals. 

"We're in the face of these patients. We do this all the time. We do it with TB patients, we did it with SARS, we did it with H1N1," says Sue Jones a respiratory therapist in Barrie and president of the Respiratory Therapy Society of Ontario. 

"That's what we do."

She says her members in the north are right now getting ready for a possible outbreak, figuring out what equipment they have, what they'll need and learning lessons from countries where COVID has spread rapidly putting ventilators in short supply. 

"If the numbers ramp up like we're seeing in Italy and Spain, then no, we won't have what we need," says Jones. 

Smaller hospitals in the northeast are counting their ventilators, but are more concerned with keeping their staff healthy during any possible outbreak. 

"Our hospital has four and I think that's a reasonable supply for a hospital of our size," says Mike Baker, president and CEO of the Temiskaming Hospital.  

"It's difficult to know, because we don't know where this is going to go."

The hospital in Mattawa has no ventilator machines.

But president and CEO Pierre Noel says their job will be to take other patients in their 19 beds, so the North Bay hospital can handle more COVID-19 cases. 

"This is perhaps still the calm before the storm. Hopefully the storm will pass up by, but nobody is counting on that," he says.