“We are at the end of our abilities,” said Farial Faquiry, a 29-year-old nurse in an intensive care unit at Humber River Hospital in Toronto, overwhelmed like the rest of the Canadian province of Ontario by a dreaded third wave of the Covid-19 epidemic.
The young caregiver takes care of two patients in their sixties placed on ventilators.
“We’re just exhausted,” she told AFP, relaying the feelings of most of her colleagues, who often say they are “powerless” and sometimes angry, especially against Ontarians who do not follow health instructions .
After Quebec, it is now Ontario’s turn to be the epicenter in Canada of an epidemic aggravated by the spread of variants, more virulent and now in the majority. To the point that the province had to resolve to call in the army and the Red Cross for reinforcement.
“This wave is much worse than the first two. We are seeing a lot more patients arriving, and they are younger and more seriously ill,” said Kimisha Marshall, the head nurse.
“We are running out of nurses. Some have left, others are also getting sick,” she adds.
More than 2,200 people were hospitalized at the end of the week in the province of 14 million inhabitants. Nearly 900 patients were in intensive care, a peak since the start of the pandemic.
Medical staff have been redeployed to lend a hand, and transferring patients to less affected areas has recently alleviated some of the pressure on the Toronto hospital.
But more than a year since the start of the pandemic, “the team is tired,” explains Raman Rai, the head of intensive care where a few drawings of children thanking caregivers are hung on the walls.
“The feeling that wins out is sadness,” she said. “You see people who have not only lost a loved one, but who have lost several members of their family. It is very hard.”
In this hospital, on Wednesday, more than 60% of patients hospitalized in intensive care were infected with Covid-19. In one of the bedrooms, relatives and a priest were praying around the bed of a sick person.
– “Frustrated” –
Each day, several patients must be placed on a ventilator. Like this 52-year-old man with a low oxygen saturation rate, intubated by a team of four caregivers fully equipped with gowns, gloves, masks and visors.
“He was so scared, he could barely breathe,” said Melody Baril, who performed the intubation. “We try to give them a little hope, a little energy, but the death rate is so high when it comes to that.”
About 8,000 people have died in Ontario since the start of the pandemic, or one-third of the deaths recorded in Canada. The province has nearly 40% of the total cases in the country.
After a peak in mid-April, the number of new daily infections has fallen slightly for ten days and vaccination is accelerating, yet the number of patients in intensive care continues to increase.
Fearing that the situation will continue, some caregivers say they are angry with the government of Premier Doug Ford – much criticized for its management of the third wave – but also against part of the population.
“I feel frustrated,” says Sarah Banani, a 49-year-old nurse. “I think stronger and faster action might have been taken when the variants were seen to take hold.”
“We all feel like we’ve been abandoned by society a bit. A lot of people feel helpless,” adds Jamie Spiegelman, a doctor. “When I go out and see the traffic, the people in the malls who don’t take the necessary precautions, it’s disappointing.”
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