A person wears a face mask and shield to curb the spread of COVID-19 while walking in Vancouver on Sunday, Dec. 6, 2020.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
A specialty team of British Columbia paramedics assembled this year to respond to incidents in rural and remote areas has deployed for the first time to a northern B.C. community where a surge in coronavirus cases is threatening to overwhelm health care resources.
The BC Emergency Health Services’ Major Incident Rapid Response Team deployed on Wednesday to Fort St. James, 160 kilometres northwest of Prince George, where there are currently about 40 active COVID-19 cases in the community of only about 2,000 people. The team brought equipment, medications, an ambulance and an SUV support vehicle out of Fort St. John.
Upon arriving, the four person-team, which comprises two critical-care paramedics, one advance-care paramedic and a primary-care paramedic, was immediately dispatched on a purple call – a classification representing the most immediately life-threatening emergency call.
Joe Acker, director of clinical and professional practice at BCEHS, said the five local paramedics in Fort St. James responded to 33 calls in six days, compared with one or two a day normally. November was the busiest month of the year, with 95 calls.
“The area has a number of [COVID-19] clusters that all feed into the local hospital, the Stuart Lake Hospital,” he said. “So over the last several days, the hospital has been inundated with a number of patients that are presumptive positive, and some that are indeed COVID positive. That in turn creates a significant workload on the paramedics who are moving those patients out of the local facility two hours down the road to Prince George.”
Mr. Acker said the team’s primary responsibilities will be supporting hospital staff and helping to stabilize patients for transport to Prince George, which still has capacity. Should those spaces fill up, patients would be brought to Kelowna or the Lower Mainland. As well, team members will be able to provide a break for on-site paramedics by relieving them of some of their call volume. The team is expected to remain on site through the weekend.
The rolling seven-day average of new COVID-19 infections in the Northern Health region is currently 36.5, compared with fewer than seven new cases a day at the beginning of November. There are now 378 active cases in the region.
B.C. Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry said Thursday that there were 39 active cases in Fort St. James, with 20 of those people requiring hospitalization. Three people had been transferred out of the community for a higher level of care. An earlier internal BCEHS memo had the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases at about 50.
“I will say as well that early on in this we recognized that people who were at risk of having more severe illness, or needing hospitalization, we have a program in place to move them closer to some of the higher level of care facilities,” Dr. Henry said. “So there are some people who have been moved from the community and supported by BC Housing in different areas closer to health care facilities.”
Across the region, Northern Health has 41 critical-care “base” beds, 23 surge capacity critical-care beds that can be scaled up or down depending on need, and approximately 100 ventilators.
Meanwhile, a nearby First Nation has locked down the community in an effort to halt the spread of the virus. Chief Aileen Prince of the Nak’azdli Whut’en First Nation adjacent to Fort St. James ordered a two-week closing beginning on Dec. 4, citing a “concerning number” of COVID-19 cases. Non-residents are not permitted to enter, residents are to limit their contacts, and security patrols were reinitiated this past Monday to monitor and report any violations of COVID-19 regulations. Schools have also closed early for the winter break.
“The numbers are significantly higher than the first cluster event that we had and it’s very worrisome to not only the council, the staff, the health staff, but the whole community,” Ms. Prince said in a Dec. 4 video to residents. “It’s time to get serious about getting this under control. … It’s the only way to get a handle on this.”
In an e-mail, Ms. Prince said the community is grateful for the assistance of BCEHS.
“We are so appreciative of all our health and front-line workers, as well as the people that are keeping the essential services and products moving,” she wrote.
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