Havoc is hitting hospitals as patients hospitalized for some other acute illness are getting COVID, adding to the complexity of care — and Alberta’s COVID vaccinations aren’t available yet, and the province’s low vaccination rate isn’t helping.

The hospital is bundling patients with infectious diseases together in an effort to isolate COVID in particular.

“There’s been at least a couple COVID outbreaks declared at different wards in the hospital. There are signs that there is COVID spreading amongst the patients on a ward, so then they close the whole ward, and we are still trying to cohort patients.”

“Especially when we’re at capacity and we’re looking at shared rooms and rooms with four people in them. If one person in that room has COVID, you know the next three are going to get it if they’re not already sick with COVID, which is why we lump them together.”

There’s been 322 COVID cases, with 87 cases reported just in the week between Sept. 27 and Oct. 3, with 24 cases in hospital and one case in ICU.

So far this season, one person died from SARS-COVID-2.

“We’re seeing hallways full of stretchers and ambulance patients being offloaded into hallways, and you know wait times are creeping into the double digits fairly routinely. So I’d say yes, it’s bad. I don’t know that it’s really gotten much better over the summer.”

It’s all exacerbated by low levels of COVID vaccination around the province…

“We usually start immunizations in October, and so we’re just starting those now. And this year, though, the viruses have landed early, and so a lot of people will catch the disease as opposed to getting immunized to be protected from the disease.”

“It will mutate, and everyone who caught COVID before will catch it again, because your immunity is no longer going to work. Your immune system tends to forget about COVID fairly quickly, and then you also have it mutating away from the immunity that you do have.”

“We were told it was going to be endemic, and people didn’t really think that that just meant it was going to keep coming back. It is back.”

“Last year was the deadliest flu season on record, and Alberta’s lowest vaccination rates for over a decade. The UCP is charging most Albertans over $100 for a COVID shot during an affordability crisis instead of making it easier for people to get vaccinated and taking pressure off our health care system.”