Edmonton hospitals postpone all day surgeries as they struggle with COVID-19 | CBC News

The change comes as Alberta’s fourth wave of COVID-19 pushes Alberta hospitals to the breaking point.

“This situation continues to be very serious,” Williamson said in a statement.

By postponing day surgeries and procedures, AHS hopes to have “sufficient ICU and inpatient capacity to manage the increased COVID activity across the zone and the province.”

Patients who are affected will be contacted and their procedures will be rescheduled as soon as possible, AHS said. 

“These surgical reductions free up space for patients who require inpatient and critical care supports and allow the redeployment of frontline staff to areas of greatest need.” 

‘Life and limb’

An internal AHS memo obtained by CBC News outlines the new surgical capacity guidelines. It includes details about how surge-capacity planning for the pandemic could affect triage.

The memo says the next reduction in service will be to limit surgery to “life and limb” procedures and result in further closures of local operating theatres.

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Based on an early warning system, the next reduction in surgical capacity could come by Sept. 17, the memo cautions. 

On its website, AHS says its data-based early warning system is used to anticipate upcoming needs for inpatient and critical care beds. The system anticipates needs two weeks into the future.

On Sept. 3 — as intensive care wards began filling with COVID-19 patients —  AHS postponed up to 50 per cent of scheduled surgeries and procedures in the Edmonton zone.  Surgeries have also been postponed in the Calgary health zone, and across northern and central Alberta. 

To date, the Edmonton zone has opened an additional 54 ICU surge beds in addition to the 72 ICU funded beds for a total of 126 critical care beds, AHS said in the statement. 

As of midday Sunday, 111 of the 126 ICU beds were filled, AHS said.

“We are able to staff these beds and respond to critical care needs for the Edmonton zone as well as support the North and Central zones, who have less ability to create additional critical care capacity. 

“We do not make these decisions lightly, and we acknowledge that postponing surgeries has a significant impact on patients, their families, and their loved ones.” 

‘The pressure is severe’ 

The pressure on hospitals has led to concerns from doctors and frontline health-care workers who fear that resources may become so overwhelmed they may be forced to choose which COVID-19 patients receive life-saving care.  

 AHS is not enacting emergency triage protocols but critical care teams have been asked to “re-familiarize themselves” with the protocol, Williamson said. 

The protocol has not been enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The triage protocol would only be activated when all available resources for critical care and “all other mitigations” have been exhausted, he said. 

“The pressure on our ICUs is severe, and AHS is doing all it can to increase capacity so that all patients needing critical care will receive it,” Williamson said. 

Alberta continues to lead the country in daily new COVID-19 cases and active cases. 

On Friday the province reported 1,473 new cases out of more than 13,625 tests. There were 16,265 active cases across Alberta.

Alberta reported 10 more deaths from COVID-19 on Friday. In total, 2,444 Albertans have died of the disease.

There were 686 people being treated in hospital, 169 of whom were in intensive care beds.

Of the 517 non-ICU, 74.1 per cent are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. Of the 169 in ICU, 91.2 per cent are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.