The National co-host Adrienne Arsenault reports from Humber River Hospital in Toronto, which gave CBC News rare access to observe a day in the life of the hospital in the midst of a global pandemic
The National’s Adrienne Arsenault gets rare access inside a Toronto hospital during the global COVID-19 pandemic to see first-hand what staff are up against. Some of what our team saw and captured on camera may be difficult to watch. 9:56
COVID-19 is showing its callousness again and again.
In the ICU at Humber River Hospital in Toronto is a man on a ventilator who’s really struggling.
When he first arrived, his breathing was so laboured there were only minutes to decide he needed to be intubated.
That’s the moment you’d want and need those you love nearby.
But this is a hospital without family members or flowers or balloons, and the absences scream “crisis.”
He is the patient of Dr. Tasleem Nimjee, and the isolation of this breaks her heart. So does the scene a few floors down in the ER.
A man arrived by ambulance from a nursing home. He was unresponsive.
In part because testing numbers are so low in Ontario, the waiting staff had no idea if he was positive for COVID-19. So they had to presume he was. That meant meticulously donning all the PPE (personal protection equipment) they could. To perform CPR on someone who may have the virus is incredibly risky.
Nimjee describes the fear of working with COVID-19 patients.
“It’s not calm when we’re going in to do these procedures; even ourselves, who are trained, our hearts are racing,” she said.
“What we don’t want is to have it so that you’re doing case after case after case, that’s when everybody is at highest risk. That’s when you’re more likely to contaminate yourself.”
Family could not be there
Nimjee suited up and joined the team doing everything they could for the man in the ER.
He did not survive. And that is where an already excrucia