Boundary Trails Health Centre physicians fear lower vaccine uptake could bring surge to rural facility

Rural doctors in the region with the lowest vaccination rates in the province are bracing for hospital surges and staff shortages as the Omicron variant takes off in southern Manitoba.

Throughout the pandemic, the Southern Health region, which has the lowest COVID-19 immunization rates in the province, has accounted for a disproportionate number of cases and hospitalizations. 

Until very recently, the Delta coronavirus variant remained dominant there. So far places like Boundary Trails Health Centre, between Winkler and Morden, have yet to see the kind of massive uptick in hospitalizations and staff shortages seen in Winnipeg due to the more contagious Omicron strain.

Two doctors fear that could soon change.

"Our capacity can fairly quickly be overwhelmed," said Dr. Dan Hunt, who works at C.W. Wiebe Medical Centre and Boundary Trails. "It very quickly runs into a very challenging scenario, and that assumes that there are ICU beds for people."

Trends from some heavily vaccinated jurisdictions outside of Canada suggest Omicron may cause less severe illness than Delta. But Hunt said that narrative runs the risk of lulling people into a false sense of security in a region where vaccination rates are 63 per cent.

He believes Omicron will transmit just as widely in the south as it has in Winnipeg, where over 85 per cent have been vaccinated and hospitals have more COVID-19 patients than any previous wave.

"It's going to find a whole lot more unvaccinated people than it has in Winnipeg," he said. "That's a concern because they are obviously far more likely to end up in hospital and ICU."

Hunt said losing some specialized workers to isolation during a hospitalization surge would have a domino effect.

As an example, Hunt said losing the lone respiratory therapist on staff at Boundary Trails for five days would mean a nurse and doctor might get pulled into doing inter-facility transfers, removing two more staff from the emergency room. They could intubate someone if necessary, but hooking that patient up to a ventilator "is not really possible" without a respiratory therapist, said Hunt.

One of Hunt's peers shares his concerns.

"If we go further down, I just don't know how we're going to do it," said the physician. CBC News is not naming the other Boundary Trails doctor because of concerns it could impact their job.

"We have some capacity now, but once our numbers start rising, that's going to disappear quickly."

The physician said Boundary Trails recently started taking in Winnipeg COVID-19 patients because the facility had some capacity. Work is underway to open 10 more patient beds in the special care unit, which functions as the hospital ICU, for a total of 20 beds.