Western Health is attempting to adapt to the attack of the H1N1 influenza A virus.
Dr. Ken Jenkins, vice-president of medical services for Western Health, said the health organization is “cohorting” the flu cases that come into the institutions in the region.

He said there are 27 cases of swine flu in the acute-care hospitals in the region and five of those cases are in the intensive care unit. There are three people with swine flu on ventilators in the region. Most of the hospitalizations are in Corner Brook at Western Memorial Regional Hospital.

“It’s an unusual fall for us,” Jenkins said. “We typically have influenza in the fall, but we don’t see these types of numbers of admissions and intensive care admissions. That’s unusual for us.
“Typically late fall or early winter is when we start to see our spikes. It’s a very early start to it as well.”

Western Health is keeping the people with the flu together as much as they can to create efficiencies in treatments and staffing. Most of the cases are being treated on the 3B unit of the hospital, which is normally a surgical unit. To stem the flow of patients to the area all elective surgeries have been cancelled for the time being.

“One of the main reasons we had to take these measures was relevant to our staffing situation,” Jenkins said. “We have fairly high levels of staff illness and that has continued. We’re starting to see some small change and we’re hoping we’re on a positive trend in that regard.
“We’ve had major uptake in vaccine by our staff. Within the next week, or two we should start to see some reduction in staff illness.”

Currently there are around 40-50 staff in the region who are sick with swine flu. Managers are looking at leave requests and they may be cancelled, depending on the area, skills of the person involved and staffing.

That figure means they’ve had to redistribute staff to the flu assessment centre at the former Regina High School complex, the intensive care unit, the emergency room and the makeshift flu unit.

“We’re needing to keep those areas staffed fairly fully and of course that’s taking them away from other areas where elective procedures are occurring,” he said.