COVID-19: Kitchener hospital issues warning about ‘unprecedented level of pressure’

4,061 people in Ontario hospitals with COVID, 594 in intensive care “Today we are facing an unprecedented level of pressure across our hospital,” said GRH president Ron Gagnon on Thursday.“Since the beginning of the pandemic we’ve added 146 additional beds and today, all but one — a remaining bed in our critical care — is filled.”As of Thursday, the hospital also had four active COVID-19 outbreaks which increased the challenges the hospital was facing.Gagnon said the hospital may need to begin transferring patients elsewhere but given that hospitals in other areas of the province present similar challenges, that may be no easy task.“We are working as hard and fast as we can to find available beds and team members to staff them,” said Bonnie Camm, executive vice president of clinical services. “This week alone, we’ve opened 13 additional beds including our ICU C unit with four beds and nine beds for alternate level of care patients at our Freeport Campus.“In most cases, these are patients who would be returning home or to long-term care facilities if it weren’t for the impact of COVID-19 and, in particular, the system-wide outbreaks.”She said that the hospital has been forced to place patients in the children’s inpatient and day surgery units and that the hospital will open 15 new beds at the Freeport campus next week.The hospital said that despite the fact that the number of new cases in the community has declined slightly, it will still feel the impacts as, historically, the impacts to hospitals occur two or three weeks later.It said area hospitals are preparing for the fact they have not seen the peak of the current wave of COVID-19.“While the situation is dire, it is not hopeless and there is still much the.