Lac La Biche County's top medical doctor is urging the community to take the COVID-19 flu more seriously.
While there have yet to be any local confirmed cases of the pandemic virus that has already infected 266,000 people around the world, Lac La Biche region's medical chief of staff Dr. Richard Birkill says local cases of the respiratory virus are inevitable.
"It's coming, and in the next two weeks it will be much, much worse," said the local doctor who is surprised by the lack of community buy-in to the situation. "It's going to happen and it's going to happen very quickly."
Seeing the amount of social interactions that are continuing, the doctor fears the result will be overwhelming for an already strained health system, forcing life and death decisions to be made.
In Italy, he said, the high mortality rate from the virus — estimated now to be at least 12 per cent — is due to the crushing pressure of so many patients on that country's healthcare system. For local residents to think that kind of situation can't happen in their small, rural communities, the results could be fatal.
"I think people are really sticking their heads in the sand," Birkill told the POST on Friday, adding that his own family has stocked up on supplies for an extended period and have closed their homes to all visitors.
It's a mindset that all community members need to take.
While the respiratory virus can be fatal for some, the largest fear, said Birkill, is the sheer volume of cases that could flood the system.
"The only way to slow this virus down is for people to avoid other people," he warned. "Wash your hands and stay at home."
Birkill said the Coronavirus — COVID-19 — is the first global virus with such a fast rate of spread in 100 years. The Spanish Flu that swept the globe between 1918 and 1920 killed a reported 7 million people — 55,000 in Canada — and needs to serve as a reminder, he says.
"The last time anything like this happened was a hundred years ago — nobody has seen anything like this before."
With better healthcare, communications and technology, the death rate of the COVID-19 virus is expected to be substantially less — but Birkill says it will only work if the public takes the proper precautions. Currenlty, he said, medical professionals across the province are in constant contact with Alberta Health and Health Canada officials. It doesn't get much more serious than this, he said.
"We are in major disaster planning mode," he warned.
Health professionals face flu
Ironically, despite his warnings and cautions to the public and his own family's precautions, Birkill himself fully expects to contract the virus, and has plans to isolate himself from his own family in the days to come.
"As of next week, I won't be going home to my family anymore because there's a very high probability I will be exposed, as I'm going to be treating some super sick people that need to be intubated and ventilated ...," he said, adding that many health professionals will likely find themselves in the same situation. The only way to reduce the affects of the inevitable virus on front line staff and within the community — he re-emphasized, is to take the precautions seriously.
"It is up to the community. We cannot affort to overrun our health system," he said.
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