People are afraid to go to the hospital here as well, not out of financial worries, fear of catching covid19 is greater than not getting help.


https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/all-of-our-rooms-are-empty-hospital-ers-vacant-during-pandemic-1.4918208

TORONTO -- The Emergency Department is usually one of the busiest areas of any hospital, but now many ERs are full of empty beds, as patients with ailments and injuries unrelated to coronavirus are avoiding hospitals due to pandemic fears. “It’s so strange to walk through an emergency room with so many empty beds,” Dr. Gaurav Puri of Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket told CTV News. Here there are no wheelchairs and all of our rooms are empty.”

There has been a 30- to 40-per-cent drop in patients in many ERs in Canada. “Patients who may need to be coming in to get care … are choosing not (to) because of their fear of getting COVID in hospital,” Puri said. The lights have literally been turned off in some hospital corridors that used to be bustling with activity. “They’re not even staffing it with nurses because there's no patients,” Puri said. “It's eerie. It's definitely eerie.”

Those that do come in to the ER despite their fear of COVID-19 are often coming in almost too late, Puri said. “We're seeing patients who have abdominal pain for a week and they come in and they've got a ruptured appendicitis,” Puri explained.

A new report estimates that there are now more than 11 thousand unoccupied beds in hospitals across Canada, both because of fewer ER visits and the fact that a staggering number of surgeries -- almost 53 thousand -- have been cancelled. “We are still not doing elective cases -- the main surgeries we are doing is emergency cases,” said Puri. “I don’t know what they’re going to do, because it’s pushed everything back and there are certain things that are time sensitive.”

Ontario's health minister estimates that 35 people have died waiting for cardiac surgery. It’s a number that is sure to increase, as thousands of surgeries are delayed with every week that the novel coronavirus crisis continues to monopolize our health care system.


Less traffic and work related incidents also keep ER visits lower, but here's proof covid19 is already killing more people than just from infection.


Today my pool was opened and instead of the usual two guys (father and son) that come to open only the father showed up. His son's own son was scheduled to get his tonsils out beginning of March, which was cancelled. Now he is watching his 3 year old 24/7 since it got to a point where he can stop breathing from the obstruction if laying down the wrong way :(

(Anyway we got the job done while staying 6+ feet apart at all times, never touched the same thing etc)

Yea I cracked my head open little over week ago on TV stand. All my friends were like go to the doctors, clinic or emergency room. I was like fuck that. It's healing up decent now and probably barely needed a stitch or two. Just will have a 6-8 inch long gash/scar on top/side of my head now...

I didn't go because medical bills and fear of catching corona. The double whammy. I'd show a pic of it healed now but I'll spare you guys. Looks like someone took a battle axe or sword to my head.

Phil Murphy is the Democratic Governor of NJ, and he has already announced that he is reopening the parks and golf courses this weekend.

Parks and golf courses are a little different than retail stores and restaurants.  I believe it is a lot easier to avoid people at a park or golf course than being a cashier at Macy's.

Also I believe NJ is involved in multistate cooperation with New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut.  One state won't open up parks while others are still closed.  NJ Governor might have stated he wanted to but unless he backs out of cooperation with other surrounding states then I doubt NJ will do it alone.

You got a link for your claim?  I'll try look it up myself.  I see an article that states he wants to open up within weeks.  Nothing about opening parks and golf courses now.  Says by memorial day which is May 25th.

Edit- Finally found article about him talking about opening up the golf courses and parks this weekend.  Which unless NY does also doesn't make since because I bet NJ will get flooded with New Yorkers trying to go get some recreational time. 

One thing I'm glad is that I don't live in a downtown hell hole that barely has any open spaces or parks.

Wages in grocery stores have increased here

Update: On Sunday, March 22, 2020, Sobeys announced pay increases for frontline workers in stores and distribution centres as well, to the tune of $50 a week, regardless of number of hours worked. Workers with 20 hours or more a week will get an extra $2 an hour. The increases are retroactive to March 8 and will be reassessed in late April.

So called 'hero' pay will be ongoing until at least May 8th but experts expect the raises to stay, as well as the extra safety measures.

A survey revealed 22% of Canadians intend to switch to online grocery shopping from now on. Instacart, serving 300 cities, is hiring 30K new employees to keep up with demand during the pandemic.

While nurses are getting fired or their wages slashed in the US, grocery stores are hiring... Crazy stuff.

UK finally catching up to other countries in amount of tests conducted on a daily basis.

Barozi said: UK finally catching up to other countries in amount of tests conducted on a daily basis.

Is that for the entire UK? I thought we were slow on testing :/ This is the current total for Ontario (population 14.6 million)

277,522 total tests (11,859 pending)
16,187 confirmed, 1,082 deceased.

Since Ontario has 22% of the population of the UK, would compare to 1,258,288 total tests for 66.7 million.

Barozi said: UK finally catching up to other countries in amount of tests conducted on a daily basis.

13,000 tests pr 1m.

UK is around #54th or so when it comes to testing.

Theres more than 50 other nations, that have done more / better testing than them.

However testing by itself is kinda meaningless.
Its just a "tool" you use to get a picture of things, or to track&track so you can isolate.

Look at South Korea, a place were they basically "beat" this virus.
They have done less testing overall than the UK has (pr population), but they beat the virus.

Sometimes how you use that data is more important than just gathering it.

The worse the spread is, the more important it is though.
You need to keep a very carefull eye on Rt rates, if you want to open  the economy back up, or you risk it getting out of hand, without you even knowing about it (until its too late)

Testing is not so important, same with confirmed cases, if you do more tests you get more confirmed cases.

Look at Japan they have done great job of holding the virus back without doing many tests at all.

SvennoJ said: Barozi said: UK finally catching up to other countries in amount of tests conducted on a daily basis. Is that for the entire UK? I thought we were slow on testing :/ This is the current total for Ontario (population 14.6 million) 277,522 total tests (11,859 pending) 16,187 confirmed, 1,082 deceased. Since Ontario has 22% of the population of the UK, would compare to 1,258,288 total tests for 66.7 million.

Well yeah they conducted between 15k and 25k tests a day for weeks which was terribly low. I think it was 50k yesterday and 80k today so they made a huge jump. The UK also targets 100k tests a day so if they can reach that they will be one of the top performing countries in that regard. However, it would still take some time to catch up to in total numbers.

To put it in perspective, the UK was at 820k total tests yesterday and with 82k tests a day they can double the totals in only 10 days.