The number of COVID-19 patients ending up in intensive care in Manitoba's hospitals is exceeding the province's most extreme projected scenarios for the third wave.
Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba's deputy chief public health officer, unveiled the pandemic modelling Friday that the province used to assess the need for its most recent lockdown measures.
Atwal said he thinks case counts in Manitoba will peak sometime next week, but it could take between two and four weeks before intensive care admissions hit their highest numbers — ahead of the scenarios outlined in the modelling.
He pointed to people not following public health orders and guidance as the reason behind why Manitoba's numbers have surged above worst-case scenarios.
"What's driving this extreme scenario is people's behaviours. It's about those interactions. It's about not adhering to the orders to [their] fullest degree. It's about not listening to the messaging to its fullest degree," he said at a news conference.
"We have people [diagnosed with COVID-19] who are being honest, who are saying, 'Yes, I went to a bonfire. Yes, I had a sleepover. Yes, six of us got together at someone's house and played video games. Yes, we had a big barbecue.'"
The increase in intensive care admissions is also partly because more contagious coronavirus variants have led to younger, unvaccinated people having more severe outcomes and spending more time in hospital, Atwal said.
"Being young does not make you immune to COVID-19. Being young does not mean you will not have a severe outcome. We have many hospital beds occupied by young people who are otherwise healthy," he said.
Over the last two weeks, about half the COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Manitoba are under 50. Those cases are split evenly between people in their 30s, 40s and those under 30, Atwal said. About 25 per cent of people who land in intensive care with COVID-19 stay longer than two weeks, though some stay as long as seven weeks.
As of midnight, 67 of Manitoba's 117 intensive care patients had been diagnosed with COVID-19, a spokesperson for Shared Health said in an email on Friday afternoon. Fifty of those cases were still active and 12 of those people were under age 40.
Before the pandemic, the baseline capacity for the province's critical care program was 72 patients, the spokesperson said.
Atwal said the province will release its modelling more often in the future to help people better understand Manitoba's pandemic situation. But he stopped short of saying there would have been better compliance with public health orders if the models had been shown to the public earlier.
"It is challenging to say," he said. "Maybe it would have helped in some situations, and in other situations it probably wouldn't have made a difference."
Manitoba's 3rd wave exceeding worst-case projections for intensive care patient numbers - CBC.ca
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