Island Health is asking people who don’t need emergency care to visit walk-in clinics and urgent and primary care centres instead of emergency rooms, as hospitals deal with a spike in patient numbers.
The pre-COVID average in June for traffic in hospital emergency rooms on the Island was about 850 to 900 visits a day over the eight of the Island’s largest hospitals. On Monday, there were 1,100 visits to those same eight hospitals — the busiest being Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, Victoria General Hospital and Royal Jubilee Hospital. That’s a 22 per cent increase.
“On top of that, we saw about a 35 per cent increase in the number of patients requiring admission to hospital through the emergency room,” said Dr. Ben Williams, chief medical officer of Island Health.
Those experiencing heat stress were mostly older people with underlying health conditions who “generally require a higher level of care when their bodies are trying to manage extreme heat in the community and we can’t discharge someone back home if their home is 35 C and they’re already too hot,” he said.
Meanwhile, police and emergency services have been redeploying officers and pleading for people to call 911 only during emergencies, “as heat-related deaths have depleted frontline resources and severely delayed response time,” said Public Safety Minister Farnworth.
Systems across the province are working hard but individuals must also do their part to ensure their own safety and that of their neighbours and animals.
The number of sudden deaths in B.C. has spiked during the heat wave, with about three times as many as usual, according to the B.C. Coroners Office.
