Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is in the process of setting up a mobile field hospital in its parking lot as it prepares to deal with a possible third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier this year, the Trudeau government promised to set up two of the specialized mobile field hospitals in the GTA in order to add 200 beds to the hospital system.
The 100-bed facility being set up in Sunnybrook's parking lot is one of the promised facilities, CTV news Toronto learned Monday, and is meant to help bolster the region’s health-care system against being overwhelmed.
Workers could be seen setting up tents outside the hospital Tuesday.
The facility will have ventilators, oxygen machines, portable x-ray machines, and a negative-pressure system.
The federal government has contracted Weatherhaven Global Resources to build the facilities.
The field hospital could be operational as early as April and is expected to remain in place at least until May.
Reason for optimism, but need for caution
The move comes as Toronto’s top doctor warned Monday that while there is cause for optimism given the imminent arrival of more vaccines, there is still a strong need for caution to protect against the virus.
In her latest briefing, Medical Officer of Health Dr. Eileen de Villa said that the growing proportion of COVID-19 cases screening positive for more contagious variants of concern means Toronto remains in a very “precarious” position.
She said the calculated doubling time for variants of concern is now at nine days.
“While our last full week of data shows that 32 per cent of COVID-19 cases involved a variant, preliminary data from the most recent period suggests almost 40 per cent of our reported cases are now being screened positive as a variant of concern,” de Villa told reporters Monday.
She cited research from the Scripps Research Institute in California and the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota which found that in all countries where variants caused threatening resurgences, each instance occurred when variants made up around 50 per cent of all viruses identified.
She added that while the vaccines are powerful, they are "not beyond challenge" by the virus and there are still a number of unknowns in terms of how variants might dampen the overall effectiveness of vaccines in combatting the pandemic.
“These are exciting and promising times with vaccine supply on the increase,” de Villa said. “But please don't mistake progress for completion. We have a ways to go yet and I want to remind you, and we've seen this before: If we give COVID-19 an inch, it will take a mile.
“It will take any opportunity to establish itself and spread. So I have to ask you for more patience while we get millions of people in Toronto vaccinated.”
She urged people to continue distancing, masking, handwashing and refraining from unnecessary gatherings with others.
After a provincewide lockdown yielded a significant decrease in daily case counts, case numbers have been ticking upward again in both Ontario and Toronto recently, along with hospitalizations.
The latest numbers Tuesday prompted Dr. Michael Warner, the medical director of critical care at Michael Garron Hospital, to tell CP24 that he believes a third wave of the pandemic has already begun in Toronto.
"Wave three, I believe, is upon us,” Warner said.
He called on the province to ensure that those who are at greatest risk of serious health implications from the virus are vaccinated first as doses begin to roll out to more segments of the general population.
There were 344 COVID-19 patients in Ontario Intensive Care Units last night following 27 new admissions, marking the highest number of COVID patients in the ICU since January, according to Critical Care Services Ontario data.
There were 420 COVID-19 patients in Ontario ICU’s during the peak of the second wave.
- With files from CTV News Toronto’s Natalie Johnson
