As hospitalizations for COVID-19 began to rise again, new data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) shows there were more than 120,000 hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the country from April 2022 to March 2023, a 19% increase in Comparison to the previous financial year.
Last year, COVID-19 still hurt, says Dr. Gilbert Boucher, president of the Association of Emergency Medicine Specialists of Quebec and an emergency physician at the Montreal Heart Institute.
While the number of infections and hospitalizations began to decline in the spring, the recent waves caused by Omicron have kept hospitalization rates high across Canada.
In fact, there were 19,000 more hospitalizations of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 compared to the April 2021 to March 2022 period, when there were 101,000.
In turn, emergency room visits related to the virus have decreased. In 2022-2023, provinces and territories excluding Quebec reported more than 222,000 emergency room visits due to COVID-19, compared to 262,000 visits from April 2021 to March 2022.
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The number of intensive care unit admissions also fell, from 21,000 to 16,000.
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About 25% of patients who came to the emergency room with symptoms of COVID-19 were hospitalized. Just over 10% of hospitalized patients were admitted to the intensive care unit; 40% of them required mechanical ventilation and 25% died.
From April 2022 to March 2023, more than 12,000 people hospitalized for COVID-19 died in the hospital.
Additionally, CIHI notes that the average total length of hospital stays increased from 13 days in 2021-2022 to 20 days in 2022-2023.
The largest increase in the number of hospitalizations is seen among people aged 65 and over.
Therefore, COVID-19 continues to put pressure on the healthcare system.
Even though we have overcome the pandemic, its impact is still being felt in hospitals and emergency rooms across the country, said Juliana Wu, director of Ambulatory and Acute Care Information Services, in a news release at CIHI.
The stabilization of the situation does not mean that COVID-19 will no longer have short or long-term effects.
Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 remain relatively stable but continue to impact our healthcare systems. Likewise, older and immunocompromised people are still disproportionately affected. “We also know that COVID-19 can affect the incidence of chronic diseases and that post-COVID-19 syndrome (or long COVID) is a significant public health concern,” recalled the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada , Dr. Teresa Tam, during her latest COVID-19 update.
According to a recent American study published in the journal Nature (New window), people hospitalized with COVID-19 also have a much higher risk of death and suffer more after-effects (particularly cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, neurological and pulmonary) . up to two years after infection compared to people who were not hospitalized.
Dr. Boucher adds that the high number of infections among health care workers is exacerbating the labor shortage.
The lack of staff hurts a lot. It is the least ill patients in the waiting rooms who suffer. The waiting rooms are overcrowded. […] “We have been squeezing the lemon for months,” he said, specifying that the situation for patients on stretchers is much more stable.
If demand for services increases due to a surge of COVID-19, influenza or other respiratory viruses, emergencies will likely struggle to meet demand, specifies Dr. Boucher.
But he hopes children hit by a wave of respiratory illnesses, including respiratory syncytial virus, last fall won’t get as sick this year. Children were exposed to several viruses last year, fewer infections are expected this year.
Costs in the billions
For the period April 2022 to March 2023, the total cost of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Canada (excluding Quebec) is estimated to be approximately $2.9 billion.
The average estimated cost of a COVID-19-related hospitalization was $24,000, three times higher than the average stay. Intensive care stays cost an average of $53,000 per patient.
44,000 hospitalizations in Quebec
If CIHI did not receive the data from Quebec, thanks to the data from the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ), we can see that in the period from April 2022 to March 2023 there were 44,372 hospitalizations related to COVID-19 in Quebec.
Of these hospitalizations, 17,559 were non-ICU admissions for COVID-19 and 23,345 were admissions for another reason but with a COVID-19 diagnosis.
In addition, there were 1,148 intensive care treatments for COVID-19.
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We also see that the hospitalization rate among seniors remains relatively high since January 2022.
As for deaths, 3,884 Quebecers died from COVID-19 from April 2022 to March 2023. That’s almost the same number as in the period April 2021 to March 2022, when 3,802 Quebecers died from the disease. The INSPQ does not report how many of these deaths occurred in hospital.
Since April 2023, there have been more than 5,700 hospitalizations and more than 400 deaths due to COVID-19 in Quebec.