Doctors group calls for lockdown

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/01/2022 (1409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitobans have been told to look after themselves, but a group of senior doctors is again recommending a temporary lockdown.

They fear students’ scheduled return to in-person school next week will be akin to pouring gasoline on the flames of an overflowing health-care system.

“The ideal intervention right now would be a lockdown to act as a circuit breaker, keep the kids out of school, and obviously the government has no appetite for that,” critical care physician Dr. Dan Roberts said Thursday.

“At this point, I think the only thing to do is not to throw fuel on the fire.”

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Roberts has been a spokesperson for a group of experienced doctors who have been outspoken about gaps in the provincial public health response and who have, at every turn, urged a more restrictive approach in hopes of protecting the health-care system.

This week, Roberts and eight other doctors submitted another open letter to the Free Press. In it, they ask the province to delay sending young children back to school until more of them have had a chance to get their second doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

“We strongly urge this government to delay in-person learning for K -8 students until most have received effective immunity from a second dose. We have been left with few options and only very difficult choices. This is one of the few remaining decisions that this paralyzed government and its public health officers can make that would actually help,” the letter states.

Cardiac critical care physician Dr. Eric Jacobsohn, who works at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, predicted the rest of the health-care system will have to endure a shutdown to solely treat COVID-19 patients if hospital admissions keep the current pace.

He said provincial leaders should have listened when the group of doctors recommended stricter gathering limits before Christmas.

“They failed to make the difficult decisions, and we will pay the price now,” he said. “Hope’s not a strategy.”

Manitoba didn’t act with the benefit of hindsight from the previous COVID wave, Jacobsohn added, and there will have to be accountability for this pandemic response when the crisis is over.

“I understand everybody is struggling, but not everybody had a health-care system that had no redundancy in it, that clearly failed Manitobans last time during the (previous peak), and has, in Canada, an embarrassing backlog on care.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca